


Author Commentary: Frost Bite

by Nyxelestia



Series: Abandoned or Hiatus [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Wolf (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asthma, Author Commentary, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bisexual Stiles Stilinski, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, F/M, Gen, Inhaler Feels, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Jewish Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Pack Feels, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team Feels, Werewolves, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 13:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 88,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6155278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxelestia/pseuds/Nyxelestia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an Author Commentary on my story, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4675508">Frost Bite</a>, a Captain America/Teen Wolf crossover. I was developing too many notes and references to just put in the A/N, so I'm doing this instead. Dedicated to anyone who wants to know why I take so long to update.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.1 - Steve Arrives in Beacon Hills

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Frost Bite](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4675508) by [Nyxelestia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxelestia/pseuds/Nyxelestia). 



> Posting this commentary scene-by-scene, rather than chapter-by-chapter. Shorter updates, but there will be more of them.

It was mid-afternoon by the time Steve Rogers drove into Beacon Hills, legs stiff from hours on the road and shirt sticking to his skin. He took it slow on the highway into town to admire the beautiful forest surrounding the county, but eventually the midsummer heat became too much for him. He pulled into a small business-looking district, driving through the outer edges of the town until he’d at least given a cursory-glance at all the motels the town had to offer. He wanted to know where to go later tonight.

> **Believe it or not, I originally had planned to start this story with Steve just pulling up to the Stilinskis’ house, but it seemed a bit _too_ out of the blue and I ended up throwing all this extra stuff in, namely to set the scene and give both Steve and the reader a better idea of what they were walking into.**

****  


For now, he found a dive bar to hole up in through the midafternoon heat.

He parked his bike in the barebones shade of a wilting tree, breathing in a sigh of relief as he adjusted the shoulder straps of his backpack for the first time in over a hundred miles.

> **Is 100 miles really such a long distance for non-Americans? Apparently, it’s really weird for some non-American readers that Steve would drive a hundred miles in one go, but I’ve done twice that multiple times in my life ( _quadruple_ that multiple times in my life if you don’t count 5-10 min bathroom breaks). And slight 5B spoiler, but it’s absolutely feasible that Scott and Stiles could’ve driven from California to New Mexico overnight, especially since they can switch off on driving and were going to stop as little as possible.**

****  


The bar wasn’t completely empty, but it was empty enough that Steve had no problem ordering a dark beer and some garlic fries as he curled in on himself at a table in a shadowy corner of the bar, keeping the bill of his hat low enough to obscure his face without making it too obvious he was trying to hide.

> **Have you seen that “Team Ballcap” thing? Like, Steve wearing a cap, Bucky wearing a cap, Sam wearing a cap…yeah, I absolutely believe this is the reason. You’d be amazed at how much you can hide yourself and your face with just a bit of clever angling, and no one even realizing it.**

****  


Half the other patrons were also on their own, most reading something on a smart phone, though there were a few pairs of friends quietly chatting as well. It was the slow hour after lunch but before people got off of work, and Steve made a mental note to leave once rush hour started.

He waited until the beer and fries arrived before pulling out his tablet. A password, a number code, and a finger print scan, and he was in, yet again perusing the files on Beacon Hills.

> **This was originally several paragraphs of what SHIELD thought of Beacon Hills historically, and a lot of Steve repeatedly running into redacted files and eventually giving up. But that conflicted too much with what I planned later so I cut it out and made it this vague little paragraph below.**

****  


For a small town where nothing happened, a lot sure seemed to happen. It had a long history of unusual crimes and bizarre animal attacks, enough that SHIELD had the town on its radar – even after the deaths of a family full of people who SHIELD suspected of being not quite human.

> **But not TOO vague. If you pay attention to Chapter 4 (and Chapter 5, once it comes out), no one ever says Derek’s last name when talking about him to Steve. Or any of the Hales’ last names at all. And they’re not going to, not until [REDACTED], at which point Steve will [REDACTED]. >:)**

****  


Steve read through the speculation that perhaps certain myths in human history came from a grain of truth. That maybe humans weren’t the only intelligent or humanoid species on Earth. That maybe various terrorist groups through modern history – dating all the way back to HYDRA – were on to something when they investigated mythology to see where it ran right into history.

> **So, popular history states that the Nazis were obsessed with the occult. This both was and was not true. The Ahnenerbe was originally founded to study “Aryan history” and basically prove white people once ruled the world and basically justify the Nazi regime. It just so happens that Heinrich Himmler, the guy who founded and ran it, was really into occultism, so he turned it into his own personal occult and pseudo-science research society. The Ahnenerbe was what HYDRA was based off of, except instead of just occult, they found and used alien technology. However, the Nazis as a whole were not necessarily all that preoccupied with the occult as popular culture would have you believe.**

****  


One would think humanity would have learned its lesson after the Tesseract.

> **Steve has way too much faith in humanity.**

****  


Still, Steve wasn’t here to investigate. SHIELD didn’t even know he was here, and if they did, Tony and Fury were running interference at his request. Nothing short of a life or death emergency would call Steve back to work.

He was kind of regretting that, right now.

> **You know you’re emotionally constipated when you’d rather fight off an alien invasion again than go over to someone’s house and say ‘hi’.**

****  


With a frown, he flicked his way through various files and folders, meticulously organized the way he liked it after weeks of work, until he came to civilian background checks.

It had been the only way to learn what had come of his friends – his friends, and the closest thing to family he’d ever had after his own parents died.

Since Bucky had been Steve’s next of kin, both their survivor’s benefits had gone to the Barnes family. The Barnes ladies, really, since Bucky’s own father had died in an accident on an army base years before the war even started. Mrs. Barnes had lived long enough to see all of Bucky’s sisters to adulthood, a nurse and a teacher and a secretary. Unfortunately, Anna died in a car crash, and the shock of losing her only son and youngest daughter seemed to have led to Mrs. Barnes dying of grief. Sarah and Rebecca both married, only for Sarah’s son to die in Vietnam.

> **In the movie, they state that Bucky was the oldest of four children.  
> **   
>    
>    
>    
>  For the purposes of this story, I made the rest girls, and only one have a surviving descendent to this day (I thought briefly about giving Stiles a distant cousin or something, before remembering/realizing he was already pretty distant from Bucky).  
>    
>  In the comics, Bucky had a single sister named Rebecca, so as the character with actual canon, I used her as Stiles’ grandmother.  
>    
>    
>    
>    
>  Sarah and Anna were entirely my own creations (and using basically the really common names of the time period, which is why I used Sarah even though that’s already Steve’s mom’s name – I actually have some ‘shared name’ jokes lined up and I’m currently trying to find a way to work them into the story at some point.)

****  


War seemed to kill all the Barnes boys.

> **Oh, Steve, by the time I’m done with everyone, you’re going to WISH that war killed the Barnes boys.**

****  


It was just as well that Rebecca only had one daughter, Claudia, who escaped any kind of violent ending, only to die of some kind of dementia not too long ago.

> **How DID she die? We know that she attacked Stiles at some point and had delusions about him. Is Stiles believing he killed her (if the hallucinations from Season 2 are anything to go by) just misplaced guilt, or did he actually have a role in her death? SO MANY QUESTIONS. Stilinski fam, y u so mysterious? (…no, but seriously, how can we get so much screen time with them and know so little about them –[like their first names](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/126465221695/does-anyone-else-ever-think-about-how-weird-it-is)?!)**

****  


Steve had missed Bucky’s niece by just a few years.

Hopefully her young boy – the one whose name Steve could not for the life of him pronounce – would escape the life of war and suffering that seemed to hang over the family like some kind of curse.

> **> :)**

****  


Bucky’s only family left – _Steve’s_ only family left – was a teenage boy in Beacon Hills, Bucky’s grand-nephew. There wasn’t much about him. Diagnosed with some kind of attention disorder as a child, but he seemed to get good grades all the same. He had a ‘Facebook’, which didn’t tell Steve much other than the fact no one else could pronounce his name, either, if the nickname was anything to go by.

> **Still not sure what do for Stiles’ name. Do I go with the fandom keysmash, or do I take into account the initial we saw on his ID card in Season 5? ID cards, school ID cards, REALLY don’t work like that, so I’m just so damn tempted to ignore it. But there’s been so much interesting meta about what Stiles’ name could be…**

****  


He was about to start the tenth grade, his sophomore year. Steve barely remembered being fifteen, himself – it felt like so long ago. The kid’s Facebook was full of pictures and posts about him and a friend planning to spend the fall training up so they could make the school’s lacrosse team come winter try-outs. Seeing the picture of two teenagers slurping at smoothies while making faces at a camera – or, in all likelihood, camera- _phone_ , because that was a thing in the twenty-first century…

It just made him miss Bucky, and made him realize how much he couldn’t back down from this, now.

> **Full disclosure, this story was originally going to be Sciles. Not very shippy, granted, because this fic isn’t very shippy in general – it’s team/pack fic and family feels, so friendship and family were always going to be the focus of the series, not romance, romantic relationships, or permanent peer partners of any kind. On top of that, I’m just not a romantic/shippy writer in general. Since there was so little romance at the time, I made it gen, except no one reads genfic. I started to get way too many hilarious ideas Steve seeing Stiles flail around Derek and Stiles’ having a ~thing~ for nice arms, leading to the Thor jokes, and that’s how this story became a Sterek fic.**

> **THEN around the time I was debating going back to making this a gen fic, I ran into a lot of meta about how even if HYDRA never raped the Winter Soldier/had actual Trash Parties, what they DID do (as seen or directly implied in canon, or implied via comics canon) most closely mimics sexual abuse _anyway_ , and suddenly I got another subplot in which Derek and Bucky bond over their share violation/abuse histories when they [REDACTED]. Whoops.**

> **It’s still probably going to be Scott & Stiles centric (since Bucky and Steve are such a central relationship to the series, too), and the Sterek is probably going to be very QPR-ish, in that there probably won’t be much “romance” because romance bores the hell out of me. I like romance best when it’s like the best friendship ever with some sex and kissing thrown in at the end. So when I do romance, I do so via slow build. And as anyone who’s followed my Virtues, Chicken, and Destiny series in Merlin fandom knows, when I say slow build, I _mean_ slow. (That thing’s been running for half a decade, now). But Derek is kind of like Natasha to Stiles’ Bucky (in the comics), if you want a better gist of how the relationship dynamics will pan out.**

There was nothing in these files to help Steve, nor anything online. Nothing that could tell Steve how he should go up to the last hanging thread of Bucky’s family and introduce himself and…what? There was nothing Steve could give them, nothing to be gained, and would probably just open up some scarred-old wounds to boot.

But Steve couldn’t just forget about him, either.

With a frustrated grunt, Steve shut everything down and off, stuffing the tablet away as he quickly finished the last dregs of his drink and the few fries left. He paid in cash, telling the waitress to keep the change as a tip, and quickly left just as the first of the after-work crowd started pulling into the parking lot.

It took a while to get around town. Steve tried to tell himself he was just enjoying the view, but he knew he was lying to himself.

He was a damn coward.

Eventually, though, he made himself pull up to modest house in a nice part of town, parking his bike carefully and sitting on it for a moment as he glanced at the old but cared-for SUV sitting in the driveway.

> **I never understand why people seem to think the Sheriff just uses a department SUV for his own, personal travels. Those are WORK vehicles, he can’t use them when he’s off-duty. Not to mention that even after the Sheriff was fired, we see that he still has the SUV.**

****  


“C’mon, punk,” he muttered to himself. Finally, he unhooked the helmet – originally bought for state law compliance and surprisingly useful in hiding in plain sight. He locked it to the bike, shouldered his bag, and pushed himself up the little walkway to the front door, slowing as he heard the sounds of a movie playing inside.

> **This, believe it or not, marks one of the biggest differences between the Stucky and Sciles friendships. Both are equally loving, but Sciles is a lot less name-calling and affectionately insulting each other, and a lot more mutually uplifting support. I mean, there is still teasing among the younger boys and no end of support among Steve and Bucky, but they ultimately still have very different personalities. For all the parallels I’m drawing, Scott and Steve are very different from each other, as are Bucky and Stiles. Stiles is the sarcastic one, while Scott is very much NOT, so Stiles would feel bad if he did that too much. With Steve and Bucky, neither of them are nearly as sarcastic as Stiles, but at the same time they’re both a little snarkier than Scott.**

****  


Some part of him still had trouble getting over the fact most people in America had televisions, now, that movies weren’t just something you went out to see, but also entertainment to enjoy at home.

> **Televisions _did_ exist and weren’t even all that uncommon during Steve’s day, but up until WWII, they were a little crude and mostly considered experimental technology, something the rich had as an expensive toy. They didn’t start becoming common in households until after WWII – as did household appliances and electronics in general.**

****  


Steve took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

_“Stiles!”_ he heard a man shouting from inside.

_“Got it!”_ a young boy’s voice answered.

The sounds of the movie suddenly stopped, and a moment later the door opened, revealing a lanky teenage boy in long shorts and a tee-shirt, with short brown hair and Rebecca’s eyes.

> **For a while, I debated ‘changing’ either Bucky or Stiles’ canon eye-color to give them the same color eyes. In the end, I opted for realism, as well as avoiding too many similarities. Parallels are good and all, but only so far as the supplement a story, not overtake it. Sometimes, characters have connections to other or unexpected sources, and no parallel is perfect – otherwise, they would be the same exact thing, and that’s hella boring.**

****  


“Yes?” the boy asked.

“Um…are you…” Steve swallowed. “Are you, uh, Stiles Stilinski?”

The boy’s eyes immediately narrowed, and even if he had Rebecca’s eyes, that was Bucky’s scrutiny staring Steve back in the face.

> **But there still needs to be SOME similarity. A healthy suspicion of the world at large is a Barnes family trait, which is probably why Claudia and the Sheriff got along so well. :P**

****  


God, barely a minute in and Steve felt like he was drowning in memory.

“Who wants to know?” the boy asked.

“Stiles?” the man’s voice from earlier called out. “Who is it?”

A moment later, a man in jeans and a loose shirt appeared behind the boy, expression equally wary. “Can we help you?” the man asked – the boy’s father, and Beacon Hills’ town Sheriff.

Steve swallowed, every single line and plan going out the window.

He’d been spending over a month mentally planning for and dreading this moment, and now that he was finally here, it was like he was shriveled and socially awkward all over again.

He never felt so tiny since he’d become so large.

> **I’m on the fence about a subplot. It doesn’t really add anything to the story, but I wanted to give Steve a sort of light body dysmorphia, him and Scott. While the details are different, they would both have issues of sort of missing their old/“real” body, even though their ‘new’ ones are so much better. It feel like it would clutter up the story, though.**

****  


Before he could try to come up with something, the boy’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell open in shock as recognition filled his eyes. His entire stance grew straighter, and he pointed dumbly at Steve’s face as he said, “You’re- no, no way, why-”

“My name is Steve Rogers,” Steve said finally. “I don’t know if you’ve heard about-”

“You’re Captain America!” the boy shouted in disbelief.

> **Stiles was absolutely a Captain America fanboy even before he met Steve.**

****  


Steve smiled and nodded sheepishly. He glanced at the sheriff, whose eyebrows were also going up as he looked Steve over, and then looked back at the boy.

> **It’s the Sheriff’s fault. :P**

****  


“Yeah, I…I am. The original one,” Steve added, focusing on the boy. “Your grand-uncle…Bucky Barnes was my best friend growing up, and his family practically adopted me when my own died. I…I always planned to come back to his family, even after he died. When I…woke up, a few months ago, I looked for his family. And that’s…well, you.”

Stiles’ mouth opened and closed as he gaped in shock.

The silence was so awkward, Steve was one step away from apologizing for taking their time and leaving, before Mr. Stilinski sighed and said, “Come on in, then.”

Mr. Stilinski had to nudge the boy’s shoulder to get him to step back, but after a moment he shook his head and moved, still gaping at Steve as he stepped into the household and, seeing a rack on the floor, toed off his shoes.

“I apologize for dropping in like this,” Steve said, trying to loosen his grip on his bag. “But I didn’t really know how else to do this.”

“Where’s your shield?” the boy blurted out.

> **Tony and SHIELD are scanning it and generally studying it when Steve isn’t using it, since now that Tony can _make_ vibranium, they might be able to make more shields. Of course, it turns out largely to be pointless – very few people can even use Steve’s shield, since it requires a certain level of superhuman strength, and vibranium can be so much more useful in so many other forms, anyway, and it’s difficult to manufacture in the kind of bulk needed to make the shield, and if it’s really that vibration absorbent, it’s _very_ difficult to forge or work with. Howard most likely made it as a kind of challenge to himself, not out of any expectation for it to be useful.**

****  


Mr. Stilinski’s expression abruptly shifted from wary to exasperated as scolded, “Stiles!”

Steve smiled softly at the sheepish look on Stiles’ face. The innocent curiosity of excited kids was a lot less grating than the probing of adults.

“Kind of hard to carry without drawing attention, so it’s at Stark Tower while I’m traveling.” 

Stiles led Steve into the living room, gesturing towards the couch. On the table, there was a half-empty bottle of beer and a glass of what looked like lemonade, and a bowl of chips and a pillow on the floor. Stiles darted over the television to switch it off. Steve caught a glimpse of a rugged man in a fedora before the screen went black. It was a bit flat – though not as flat as a lot of TVs were that Steve had been seeing, so likely a little older – and it sat like a silent, black hole on top of a little cabinet in the corner.

> **I really wish this came up more in Captain America fanfics. Seriously, people underestimate just how weird having screens everywhere must be, especially flat screens, to someone like Steve. He would’ve mostly or only ever watched movies projected onto white/“silver” screens, could probably count on one hand how many times they’ve seen an actual TV or screen-like viewing mechanism in his life prior to the war. Well, depending on what class you assume Steve to be, and what kind of stores he walked past a lot for most of his life – especially during the Great Depression.**

****  


The boy stood up, then glanced awkwardly around himself and at Steve. He glanced over Steve’s shoulder at – presumably – the sheriff, and that seemed to help him a little.

“Um, do you want a drink or something?” he asked. “We have water – but, uh, everyone has water, I guess – and we have orange juice and pomegranate juice and some lemonade and Coke and I think we might have a Sprite or two but I would have to double check, and we can probably make, like, coffee and stuff-“

“The man can’t tell you what he wants if you don’t let him,” Mr. Stilinski chided.

“I’m fine,” Steve said, not bothering to hide his small smile. At least he wasn’t the only awkward one here. Stiles reminded Steve of Bucky, before he really got a grasp of the family’s signature charm. “I don’t want to cause too much trouble or anything.”

“Um, dude, pouring out drink isn’t exactly trouble,” Stiles said, looking at Steve like he was slightly dim.

> **Stiles you lil shit-**

****  


Rebecca used to do that all the time.

“Stiles…” Mr. Stilinski said warningly.

Steve chuckled. “True, but I try to be polite.” He swallowed. “Seems a little late for coffee or soda, I don’t know if you just have lemonade or orange juice or if you would have to pour it out of something, and I’ve never even had pomegranate juice, so…water is always the safest bet.”

Stiles smiled. “Pomegranate juice it is, since you’ve never tried it.”

> **-but he’ll be Steve’s lil shit. And Bucky and Steve were the ultimate little shits, anyway. :P**

****  


“Stiles!” Mr. Stilinski said, sounding so long-suffering Steve couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s fine, sir,” Steve said, turning to look over his shoulder at Mr. Stilinski. “I can’t knock something until I’ve tried it.”

“I’ll bring some water in case you don’t like it,” Stiles said, slipping around the couch and disappearing into the kitchen.

Then it was just the two adult men in the living room, the only sound coming from Stiles rummaging around in the kitchen.

After a moment, the boy’s father sighed and came around the couch, dropping into a sofa and picking up the beer.

> **The Pack Papa Stilinski vibes here were absolutely intentional. I’m basically using this moment to imply that the family tradition of adopting stray angsty young’uns in need of a hug is still going strong. The Barnes family took Steve in once before, and they’re doing so again – and in both cases, the ‘parent’ doing the bulk of the adopting is someone who married into the family, not the one born into it. :P**

****  


“I suppose you’ve probably heard this before,” he said. “But thank you. For New York.”

“No thanks needed, sir,” Steve said, trying not to wince as he slipped into his pre-prepared response. “Anyone else in my position would’ve done the same, and all of us there did our part.”

> **Dealing with press and publicity is probably one of the few elements of his job still familiar to him. At least when he knows he’s on record, anyway – the hardest part, methinks, is remembering and getting used to the idea that he might always be on record, thanks to smartphones and social media.**

****  


Mr. Stilinski smirked. “That the party line?”

Steve almost went into press mode again, but then remembered this man was…well, he wasn’t the press, that was for sure.

“Sort of,” Steve said. “I got one hell of a briefing on how modern media works, and…prepared lines seemed like the best option.” He shrugged. “I’m used to it. Did it for the Army, too.”

“I’ll bet,” he said, taking a sip of his beer. “Given how hard they come down on us for talking outside party lines today, I imagine it would’ve been even worse during the war.”

> **Most people don’t realize this, but there are actually a LOT of rules about how much serving military personnel can be politically active, especially in topic areas concerning security and foreign policy. The military exists to carry out the Commander in Chief’s will. Now, soldiers can absolutely say they voted for the other guy than whoever is currently in the Oval Office and such – but their job is support whoever _is_ in office, because whoever is in the Oval Office now was put there by The People, who both the military and the President ultimately serve. They cannot advocate against military policy, their commander in chief, or otherwise undermine anything the military is doing (and generally speaking, political involvement even in non-military/foreign policy issues is frowned upon).**

****  


Steve blinked in surprise. “You served?”

> **I actually have SO MANY QUESTIONS about Sheriff Stilinski’s background in canon. Did he ever go to college? Or even community college? You don’t _need_ a degree to be a cop, but it can help and a lot of them do, especially if they ever hoped to work as a detective of some kind. Was the Sheriff ever a detective before he became a beat cop/deputy? Was he also an officer in the Army, or enlisted? An NCO? How long was he in the army before he left for civilian law enforcement? Was he an MP (Military Police) in the Army, or was Beacon Hills his first law enforcement experience?**

****  


He nodded. “Not long – just a few years after college. Couldn’t find a job at the time, and Stiles’ mother still had to finish school, so I enlisted to tide me over.” He snorted. “And while a lot of people slip through the cracks, the Army is just as big on presenting a united front during peace time as they were during war. Luckily, they support a policy of soldiers not talking to the press at all if they can help it.”

> **I kind of headcanon that the Sheriff was actually still in the army when he married Claudia and they had Stiles, but Stiles was still so young when the Sheriff left the army for civilian life that he doesn’t really remember or think of his father as being in the army.**

****  


“Wish I had that,” Steve said softly. “Would’ve saved me a lot of trouble.”

Stiles came back in carrying two cups, one of a pinkish-red drink and the other of clear water with ice in it. He handed Steve the juice while setting down the water on the coffee table.

Steve took a sip of the pomegranate juice as Stiles dropped onto the other end of the couch, and hummed in appreciation. “Not bad,” he said, taking another sip to prove his point. And it wasn’t. Steve wasn’t sure if he actively liked it, yet, but he didn’t dislike it, either. More importantly, though, it was nothing he’d ever had to drink before the war and didn’t bring up memories of what it wasn’t or how it was supposed to taste.

> **Steve’s biggest problem with food wouldn’t be stuff that’s new and completely unrelated to food he grew up with – he’d approach new food in this day the same way he’d approach new food in his own time. No, his biggest problem would probably be food that’s similar to what he grew up with, since that would keep bringing up reminders or taste _different_ from what he knows.**

****  


That was a pretty big point in its favor.

> **No, but seriously, you’d be surprised what foods this entails. Case in point: bananas. The kind of banana Americans eat today is called a Cavendish banana, but we only started importing those after the kind of bananas Steve would’ve grown up with, Gros michel bananas, were wiped out by Panama disease.  
> **   
>    
>    
>  At least in the Americas – they’re still around in Asia.  
>    
>    
>    
>  BANANA ANGST. BANANA ANGST IS A THING IN THIS FANDOM. On a completely unrelated note, Sebastian Stan – the actor for Bucky Barnes – is actually Romanian in origin. His family had to move out of Romania when he was 8 years old, and apparently seeing bananas for the first time at that age was a bit of ‘an event’ for him. 

****  


> **This is actually something I’m familiar with – I grew up with at least half my high school being made up of first-generation or second-generation Americans, and a lot of kids mention similar things. (A friend of mine mentioned that he’d literally never seen a non-white person in his life until he was in an airport after his family had to flee Russia – he’d glimpsed them on TV and such, but never in person or seen one with his own eyes).**

****  


Stiles grinned. “It’s healthy, too!”

“Thank you,” Steve said, and took another sip because there wasn’t much else to do, now.

He wasn’t even sure what he came here for, let alone what he could or would ask of them.

Thankfully, though, Stiles was willing to fill the silence, saying, “So what do you do when you’re not fighting aliens?”

Mr. Stilinski looked up at the ceiling like he was praying for strength.

> **This is a very common look for him.**

****  


“Not much,” Steve said, trying not to laugh at the expression on Mr. Stilinski’s face. “They…they found me in the ice less than half a year ago. I spent the first few months recovering, trying to catch up on all the history I’ve missed and…training, honestly. Wasn’t sure what else to do. Then the Battle of New York happened, and since then I’ve just been traveling around the country…seeing things.”

> **I was actually really conflicted about the first line in this paragraph, because someone did a breakdown and found out that on-screen, Steve’s only smiled once since waking up in the 21st century – when he’s telling Tony they won after closing Loki’s portal. That’s the one time he smiles in the Avengers, and he never smiles at all in Captain America 2. But, since even people who actually have depression can still laugh and smile, I figured it’s not like Steve can’t feel some happiness, too. An unfortunate reality of depression is that sometimes “happy thoughts” or “happy moments” are not really enough to mitigate it, and that even if you don’t have depression, grief can easily still dominate your life even with love and happiness in your life. Steve is much closer to the rest of the Avengers in this series than in the movies, and has a lot more smiling and laughter in his life. But he still lost just about everyone he knew, and his own life – he has a lot to grieve, something that he may not even let himself have time for.**

****  


“Anything cool?” Stiles asked, leaning forward excitedly.

“Well, I got to see the Grand Canyon-”

“I did a report on it once!” the boy said eagerly. “For geography in fifth grade.”

“Don’t interrupt him, Stiles,” Mr. Stilinski said. He sounded like he didn’t expect the admonishment to stick at all.

> **The Sheriff thinks Stiles is a lost cause, but he still has try. Pay attention to canon, though, and Stiles is actually not nearly as much of a motor mouth as fandom makes him out to be. This is a carefully constructed misdirection on Stiles’ part, in fact. Stiles snarks back at people a lot, but he doesn’t initiate conversation nearly as much as people seem to think. He won’t start a conversation, but he’ll absolutely keep it going until he gets what he needs.**

****  


The boy pouted anyway, contrite. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” Steve said. “It reminds me of your grandmother.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Steve said with a fond nod. “She always had something to say and was excited to say it. Bucky was always trying to get her to calm down…it never worked, though.”

> **I’m imagining that Stiles’ grandmother had ADHD. I might have Bucky show tinges of it, too, if I can work it in, between all the other crap he’s going to have to deal with. But, I’m actually not sure if Stiles has ADHD, and I headcanon that he doesn’t. We know at one point he takes Adderall, but we never find out if it’s his own prescription or just Adderall he bought from someone at school, and he doesn’t really show signs of ADHD. He may just be one of those kids that buys Adderall to help concentrate on important tests and projects, but Stiles’ priority just isn’t school so he uses it for other things, too.**

****  


Stiles grinned again, sheepish and shy but a little smug, too. “Cool.”

“Grand Canyon?” Mr. Stilinski offered, a bemused smile on his face as he apparently tried to help Steve.

Steve hesitantly launched into the story of how he and Bucky had always planned to go see the Grand Canyon when they were kids, and how Steve had gone now in his memory. He’d camped and hiked there a bit, sketched a fair amount and even started to get back into colored pencils while there.

> **When this fic was still in its earliest Sciles stages, I planned for it to end with Sciles and Stucky going on a hike in the Grand Canyon together (reminiscent of Steve’s Grand Canyon hike in the comics). I still might do that, actually. Even if Scott and Stiles aren’t romantically together, I still have a tendency to write them kind of QPR-ish/Heterosexual Life Partners (for a given value of heterosexual, anyway). I’m actually not even sure if I’ll make Stucky truly romantic/sexual Stucky, or full-blown QPR (which, let’s be real, is basically what they are in canon). Can you tell I’m aromantic? :P**

****  


That somehow devolved into talking about Steve’s drawing skills in general, his brief career in comics he’d just been starting before the war hit, how he’d done posters and pamphlets before Project Rebirth. It careened into a lot of talk about comic books in general, Stiles even running upstairs to grab some of his own to show Steve what they were like today, explaining digital art and how it was sometimes mixed with traditional art via scans and mixed-media.

> **I took 616 canon and made Steve a comic-book illustrator before the war. I originally had a subplot (which I might write anyway as a deleted scene) in which Steve is still drawing comics about his experiences, and Stiles puts them online, claiming to the Internet that he’s putting them there for his grand-uncle, a WWII veteran, and just never mentioning that it’s Steve. It…gets leaked, anyway, which caused too much chaos in the story so I ended up cutting it out, but then Stiles just posting Steve’s artwork online was largely pointless as a subplot, so the whole damn thing got cut out.**

****  


Before Steve knew it, it was dark out. Mr. Stilinski stood, twisting to crack his back slightly and disappearing into the kitchen with his empty bottle. He came back out a few moments later holding up a stack of worn-and weathered pamphlets and flyers.

“It’s almost dinner,” Mr. Stilinski said. “And you are absolutely welcome to join us, I mean it – but I also warn you that we’re going to have to order in. Been kind of a busy week, so we’re a little behind on the grocery shopping.”

Steve smiled a little wanly. “Sounds good to me, Mr. Stilinski.”

“Please, call me John. Or Sheriff, everyone does.”

> **Okay, while I’m here – if you look through the tags on that post about the Stilinskis' names, one of the number one responses is people saying they thought his name was John. It’s not, not in canon. Thus far, canon has not given us the Sheriff’s first name, or Stiles’ legal first name. ‘John’ most likely started as an actor shout-out to Linden Ashby’s other prominent role, Johnny Cage. (If you have not seen Mortal Kombat, I highly recommend you do and cackle about cheesy!BAMF!Sheriff all the way. I’m working on a Mortal Kombat/Teen Wolf crossover, actually, but that’ll be a long while in coming.) Anyway, that was probably how it started, and then it kept perpetuating because John is like the most normal, down-to-earth name a guy can have, which contrasts with not only Stiles’ name, but Teen Wolf in general. However, it is still technically fanon, just a widely-accepted one.**

****  


“Right, uh, then it sounds good to me, Sheriff,” Steve said. The man smiled approvingly as he dropped the pamphlets on the coffee table, spreading them out. Steve shook his head as he read the names and taglines of the various restaurants. “I still can’t believe this.”

“Believe what?”

He kept his eyes on the rather daunting pile of pamphlets and fliers. God, how did people manage to hold onto so many, so easily?

What if they wanted him to choose?

“When I was a kid, half this stuff was exotic and the other half was unimaginable,” Steve said. “You would’ve had to go to Chinatown for Chinese food, or a _really_ expensive restaurant. And things like Thai or Vietnamese…I never even knew they existed. And now they’re ordinary stuff.”

> **Thank you, immigration! Because imagine how boring contemporary American diets would be without it. No, seriously. *shudders***

****  


Stiles looked hesitantly at his father, and Steve winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to unload-”

“It’s cool,” Stiles said immediately. “Do you want…” He bit his lip. “Do you want something you’re used to, or something new?”

> **Thoughtful baby is thoughtful.**

****  


Steve blinked at him in surprise.

“…Captain?” Stiles asked.

“Call me Steve,” he responded. “And…you know, you’re the first person to actually ask me that?”

Both Stilinskis’ eyebrows rose in united incredulity. “Really?” the Sheriff asked.

Steve nodded. “Some people just assume I should be trying new things all the time, no matter what. Most just assume I want to stick to stuff I know.”

“Do you usually want something new or something old?” Stiles asked curiously, forgetting the menus spread out in front of him.

“Depends on my mood, I guess, but…it hasn’t really mattered in a while.” He looked down at all the menus. “I’m…somewhat familiar with Chinese food, but not very. I’m honestly not very sure where to start.”

> **Chinese people have been in America a long longer than most people realize. That said, most of the Asian-Americans Steve would’ve known in Roaring and Great Depression New York probably would’ve been Filipino.**

****  


Stiles dug right through all the menus, brandishing three of them and then discarding one. When Steve was still unsure, he handed them both to his father, who glanced at them and handed just one back, muttering about _that ginger chicken thing_.

> **Probably Sesame Ginger Chicken, since a stir-fry would not meet Stiles’ exacting health standards.**

****  


Steve fought down the strong urge to sigh in relief as Stiles handed him the lone menu pamphlet. At least he wouldn’t have to choose a restaurant to order from, and Stiles even started talking about the various options this particular place had, advising Steve to stay away from anything with the beef and that the seafood was usually hit or miss and that most of their noodles were delicious. Steve eventually settled on some chicken and noodle dish. It would probably be nothing like any chicken noodles Steve would’ve ever had, but it was close enough to familiarity that he could breathe easy as he dived into the unknown.

Mr. Stilinski went into the kitchen to call them place the order, and Stiles started stacking up the menus again, shuffling and moving them into some system comprehensible only to himself.

> **He organizes them by how long it takes for the food to get to his home from the moment he hangs up the phone after the order. Part length of time to make the food, part distances from the restaurant. In situations where they are approximately similar, Stiles then organizes by how healthy the food tends to be, in the hopes that his dad will get lazy and pick the first menu he runs into when Stiles isn’t there. It doesn’t work, because if Stiles isn’t home, the Sheriff just orders greasy pizza/fast food, anyway.**

****  


“So,” Stiles said, jerking his head towards the TV as he finished gathering up all the papers. “Wanna watch a movie?”

> **Because it’s so difficult to get Scott to watch Star Wars, Stiles compensates by getting everyone else to watch it, instead.**

****  
  



	2. 1.2 - Dinner On the Couch

Dinner was a thankfully calm and surprisingly enjoyable affair. Despite the fact Steve was a visiting guest, the Stilinskis seemed to realize how awkward trying to sit at a table and eat might be under the current circumstances.

> **Dinner table is for work. Coffee table is for dinner. Side tables are for coffee. In all seriousness, though, while coffee tables were around in Steve’s time, they weren’t all that common yet, especially in poorer living rooms/homes. Especially since I tend to headcanon the Barnes family (with Steve) living in a tenement home in the 1930s, which were small and looked a bit like this:  
> **   
>    
> 

“Eating dinner in the living room while watching something is pretty common, these days,” the Sheriff suggested as he unpacked all the little boxes out of the plastic bag they were delivered in. “Granted, that is incredibly informal, but something tells me you don’t really need formal right now.”

> **Steve is probably used to the idea of eating at places other than the dinner table – from working class to warzone, the Greatest Generation was not nearly as hung-up on table manners as popular media would have you believe.  
>  **

Steve smiled. “I really, really don’t.”

After five minutes of fretting, Stiles finally decided to put on a movie that turned out to be the one the rest of the Avengers wouldn’t shut up about.

> **Because Stiles isn’t the only one who makes Star Wars jokes that his best friend doesn’t understand. Tony makes all sorts of references in the hopes that Steve will ask about them and he gets to be the one to introduce Steve to something new. When you’re not just a Fake Geek Boy, there is no greater joy than being the one to introduce someone to something new (or drag someone kicking and screaming into a garbage can with you, depending on how you look at it), and Steve is a goddamn goldmine of opportunity for Tony. Though admittedly, Stiles showing Steve the Star Wars movies this early might be a little non-compliant with canon:  
> **   
>    
>   
> 

“Star Wars is like a cultural icon,” Stiles said, fiddling with the movie player - the DVD player - while the Sheriff plated the food in the kitchen. “Nearly everyone has seen it, and even if you haven’t - like my best friend, which is a serious error I need to correct - then most people usually know like the major characters and some plot points and stuff. There were three movies a few decades ago, which are the really famous ones, and then there was a prequel trilogy a few years ago but those sucked so everyone likes to pretend they just never happened…”

> **Stiles’ mother tried to protect her baby and lied about the existence of the prequels. Stiles appreciates the effort, but he also knows how annoying it is to find out you’ve been lied to your whole life. Look at Santa! Grr. But then he watched it and understood, so for Steve’s sake, he does a little bit of both, telling him about the originals and the prequels, but only showing him the originals.  
>  **

It was surprisingly peaceful, despite the fast-paced action of the movie. Steve and the Sheriff ate in peace while Stiles alternated between shoveling food into his mouth and explaining things in the movie, various references and how he shouldn’t get hung up on the romance of Luke and Leia and how everyone liked Chewbacca and why Steve just had to know that Han Shot First.

Stiles had definitely inherited the Barnes family gift of gab.

> **Even in the movie, Bucky was a bit more on the chatty side than Steve, and in comics this was turned up to eleven (but he also kinda _was_ eleven at the time, until people aged him up into a late teenager/barely adult because Values Dissonance). I get the feeling that Steve was the quieter one between the two of them for most of their friendship – but people didn’t notice because when Steve talked, he fucking _talked_ – and _would not shut up_. Steve was either very quiet or very loud, whereas Bucky was more evenly talkative.  
>  **

By the end of the night, Steve felt the most relaxed he’d been since leaving the Grand Canyon. Mr. Stilinski had let Steve pay for his portion of the meal, so Steve had ordered and eaten enough to satisfy the supersoldier metabolism in one go without feeling guilty. They watched the whole movie through, and only paused to dump the plates in the sink and fetch some more drinks and chips. Stiles put on the second movie in the trilogy, too.

> **Later, Stiles will easily be able to cook for werewolves because he’s already used to Steve’s superhuman appetite, anyway.  
>  **

Steve was a contented drowsy by the end of the second movie, and he smiled when Stiles yawned, large and jaw-cracking, and promptly tried to pretend it hadn’t happened.

> **I was going to make a joke about stubborn teenagers, then I remember how often I fall asleep at a table because I’m too stubborn to admit I’m tired.  
>  **

The Sheriff didn’t let him. “Bed,” he ordered as he sat up from where he’d been slumped over, apparently half-asleep, on the big sofa-chair.

“But it’s summer! And it’s Friday!”

> **And summer school is over! Random: I actually wouldn’t be surprised if most of the teen wolves did summer school. In most of America, summer school is something associated with remedial classes and falling behind, but in California it’s actually really common for students to use summer school to get ahead of their requirements, get required classed out of the way to take more electives in the year, or to use a regular/high-school level class as a foundation for taking an Honors or AP class during the school year. And I outright assume Lydia did a LOT of summer school.  
>  **

> **Though as another side note, Lydia is _incredibly_ unlikely to be taking only one class during senior year, even if she is ready to graduate – unless she were actively doing something else to take up her time (work, volunteership, internship, etc.), then she would be taking at least half as many classes as everyone else (3-4 classes, since 6-8 per term is normal). They might be all AP if she took regular level classes before (which she had to have, since she at least took chemistry at the same level as Scott, Stiles, Allison, Erica, and Isaac, and I don’t think _all_ of them were AP or even Honors), and if she’d already taken the highest version of every course available, she’d be doing a lot of electives. Either way, she would NOT have “only one class” without some other _documentable_ duties. (The documentable part is important – even if she had supernatural plans, they wouldn’t have been something she could put down on paper.) If she really were able to graduate before, the school would’ve made her graduate, anyway – that or make her take a normal course load for senior year, none of this convenient in-between business. On top of that, California graduation requirements includes four years of English, regardless of what those English classes actually are, so even if she were only taking one class in senior year, it shouldn’t be biology – it should be English. The most realistic schedule for Lydia is simply a regular course schedule that’s all AP’s.  
>  **

> **The idea of Lydia having “only one class” is exceptionally stupid to me because the only reason they gave her so much free time is to justify her running around town during the day instead of being in school…but that’s only a few times, and it is far easier to believe she should just ditch. No, seriously. Out of all the regular class ditchers in my high school, only half are the kids who are going to drop out or otherwise don’t care about their grades; the other half are the smart kids who are ditching because they already know the material and have better things to do – which the teachers often know, so some teachers don’t even care too much if you ditch, as long as you get good grades. If there’s anyone who could miss classes and still maintain her grades, it’s Lydia.  
>  **

> **And I actually _went_ to the high school Teen Wolf is filmed at from Season 3 onwards, so I could even tell you exactly how she would ditch. (It was…pretty easy, to say the least, even/especially if you had a car.)  
>  **

“Which is why you’re staying up late,” the Sheriff said, sounding more amused than anything else. “But you’re still not staying up all night.”

Stiles whined but didn’t put up too much of a fight, instead gathering up the cups and bowls together.

“You know where you’re staying, Steve?” the Sheriff asked.

“I figure I’ll go stay in one of the motels across town,” Steve said, standing up and holding out his hand to the man. “Thank you so much for letting me spend the evening here. It really meant a lot.”

The Sheriff smiled as he shook Steve’s hand. “You going to be in town for a while?”

> **The Sheriff won’t show it, but he likes having guests over. He says it’s to keep Stiles out of trouble, but really it’s about keeping Stiles company and keeping the house from being too empty.  
>  **

“I honestly don’t know,” Steve said with a shrug. At the Sheriff’s surprised look, he said, “I’ve just been driving wherever I felt the need to go from New York onwards. I hit the west coast a little faster than I expected. I have to be in Los Angeles in about three weeks, but other than that, I don’t really have anything planned out.”

“Which means you might be staying here for a few weeks, right?” Stiles said, looking hopeful.

“Uh…” Steve rattled his brain. “I…might stay here for a week or so,” he hedged.

“Then you can stay here with us!” Stiles declared.

> **Stiles likes having people over, too.  
>  **

“He can stay where he wants,” Mr. Stilinski said, though he looked oddly proud of Stiles for making his offer. He caught Steve’s expression and added, “I’m not just making this offer to be polite. We have a guest room, and it’s nothing fancy, but it’s free and probably more comfortable than any of the motels around town.

Steve thought of all the places he’d been staying, when he wasn’t just camping out under the stars. All the cheap motels and fancy hotels and bed after bed after bed that didn’t feel like home.

> **Especially since they have cheap, soft beds that are terrible for your back. A lot of us have been trained by cartoons to associate softness with luxury, but cheap beds are lot more likely to be too soft than too firm (unless they’re ‘mass bought’, industrial settings like schools, prisons, on-call rooms, etc. – _then_ they’re likely to be too firm) A bed that’s too soft is worse for your back than a bed that’s too firm (assuming the firmness is still a little softer than the ground).  
>  **

“Thank you,” Steve said, shy but earnest.

“You won’t be thanking me when this one wakes you up in the morning crashing around the bathroom,” the Sheriff said sardonically, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at his indignant son. “But until then, you’re welcome.”

> **He slept in a warzone, Sheriff, it’ll take a bit more than Stiles to wake him up if he’s not already restless.  
>  **

Steve laughed, unforced and making his cheeks ache as he followed the boy up the stairs.

This wasn’t his home, but it was _a_ home, and that made all the difference.


	3. 1.3 - The Next Morning

A lot more of a difference than Steve expected, in fact.

Steve woke up only once in the middle of the night, jerking awake with little more than a harsh breath and a half-sob, quiet in the pre-dawn chill. He played around with his phone some, grateful that he didn’t wake up either of the Stilinskis, and against all his expectations…

He actually fell back asleep just as the sun started to peek over the horizon.

> **There’s a reason why he’s normally running by now. Believe it or not, that’s actually a really important PTSD coping mechanism. Doing a simple, physical, and repetitive task is a great way to come down from nightmares, panic attacks, anxiety attacks, flashbacks, and other spikes of negative emotions and fear responses.  
> **   
>    
> 

He fell asleep, and he didn’t wake again until almost noon. He actually stared at the time on the phone, then checked his watch, unable to believe the time.

Shaking his head in bewilderment, he got dressed, brushed his teeth, and made his way downstairs. Stiles was nowhere to be seen, but the Sheriff was sitting on the sofa, a small stack of magazines by his side.

Time Magazine was still at least somewhat familiar after seventy years, and it was disturbing and relieving in equal measures.

> **Time Magazine has been around since 1923, so the red border is probably very familiar to Steve. My fave magazine! ♥ Well, actually, while the magazine has been around since 1923, their signature red border wasn't introduced until 1927:  
> **   
>    
>    
>  ~~Is it just me or does he look a bit like Col. Phillips?~~

“Morning,” the Sheriff said with an easy smile. “Sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, not hiding his surprise. “Best sleep I’ve had in…a while.”

> **The Sheriff knows a thing or two about nightmares and trauma. And very little of it is from his time in the Army, or his personal experiences at all.[Shameless self-plug time!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4467227)**

The Sheriff seemed proud of that. “Good to hear. You got any plans for today?”

“Not really,” Steve sad shyly. “I…didn’t really have any plans at all, beyond ‘find my…Bucky’s last living relative’.”

The Sheriff raised an eyebrow at the slip-up, but thankfully didn’t comment. “Stiles and I did some grocery shopping while you were still asleep,” he said, setting aside the magazine and standing up. “I’ll see what I can whip up for you.”

> **This slip-up is why the Sheriff is so quick to ‘adopt’ Steve into the family. He recognized that Bucky wasn’t just a friend to Steve, but family, and that Steve genuinely considered Stiles as his own family as much as Bucky would’ve done had it been him in this situation. That, and because he isn’t close to his extended family and Claudia’s is all dead, Stiles doesn’t really have much in the way of family, and the Sheriff would like for him to have someone.  
>  **

“Thank you,” Steve said earnestly, following the Sheriff into the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway and looked around curiously as the Sheriff opened up some cabinets to peek inside and see what he had.

“Sandwiches sound good?”

Steve nodded, politely offering assistance and taking a seat at the table when the Sheriff declined. While the Sheriff put several sandwiches together, Steve stared at the appliances on the kitchen counter curiously, trying to figure out what they were for.

> **It hasn’t come up too much yet, but Stiles and Steve start exchanging recipes and going on cooking adventures together (as in, they’ll both try a new recipe or something and compare results). It got lost to the wayside in Chapter 4, when I was originally planning to introduce it, so I’ll find a way to bring it up more in Chapter 5. I’m not a big fan of Pack Mom Stiles (well, the tropey fanon post-Season 2 version anyway; I love the Aggressive Pack Mom Stiles of Seasons 4 and 5, though). BUT, I do like the idea of Stiles being a good cook.  
>  **

The Sheriff must’ve seen his confusion, because he followed Steve’s line of sight and said, “That’s a grill.”

“That’s a grill?” Steve asked incredulously.

“A George Foreman grill,” the Sheriff said. “Not as good as the full one outdoors, but when you want grilled food and don’t want the hassle of dealing with the real deal…”

> **Grilling as we know it today is not what Steve would’ve known growing up. The closest things would’ve been camp-stoves or barbequing (largely a Southern thing in his day). The closest things to domestic grills in existence would’ve been ‘picnic grills’, and grilling was still meant for cook-outs and all-day food events. Things like kettle-grills, gas-fueled grills, and other forms of grills meant for the backyard didn’t become popular until backyards became popular with the post-WWII housing boom – before that, only the wealthy or the rural had yards, let alone outdoor grills to keep in their backyard. George Foreman and other indoor grills have only been around for about two decades or to.  
> **   
> 

Steve nodded, and then said, “What’s the thing next to it?”

“It’s called a magic bullet, but basically it’s small and really efficient blender,” the Sheriff said. “For making a smoothie or milkshake or whatever.”

> **Blenders have been around since Steve was a kid, but for the most part they were only found in bars (for making cocktails) and institutions like hospitals that needed smooth or liquefied food for patients. (Allegedly, though, a blender was at some point involved the discovery of the polio vaccine). Blenders grew right along with most other kitchen appliances during – you guessed it – the WWII housing boom.  
> **   
> 

“Huh,” Steve said, cocking his head to the side as he studied it. “And next to that…?”

It was a surprisingly enjoyable meal, Steve asking about the different kitchen appliances, which led to a nice half hour spent talking about changes in food in general. The Sheriff was amusingly familiar with health food trends entirely because Stiles kept trying to force them on him, and Steve had plenty of stories about the weird things Tony ate to compare notes. Steve was honestly surprised to find himself smiling through the Sheriff’s rants about all the godawful things Stiles had him trying, but still made a mental note to approach ‘superfoods’ with extreme caution.

> **This is why housing is considered such an integral industry to a national economy, especially the American economy – it’s not the houses, it’s the stuff inside them. Less or smaller houses = less stuff bought to fill those houses.**

But he would probably still approach them, mostly down to Tony and Natasha. They could be…quite determined, when they wanted to be.

> **Steve getting into new food and cuisine is largely their fault.  
>  **

Before he even realized it, the Sheriff was checking his watch and saying, “I have to go to a town council meeting soon - why don’t you text Stiles, spend some time with him? Hopefully, you can keep him out of trouble.”

> **Oh, Sheriff, you poor, poor soul…  
>  **

Despite the fact the family relation was through Claudia, Steve couldn’t help but smile at the familiar gruffness in the Sheriff’s voice.

“I used to be the one getting Bucky into trouble,” Steve admitted, pulling out his phone. “But I’ll do my best.”

> **Steve is very lucky I decided to cut out the scene with the Holocaust denier, next chapter.**


	4. 2.1 - Froyo Conversations

Steve pulled up to some kind of ice-cream place – or rather, a frozen-yogurt place. Steve still wasn’t sure what the difference was.

> **What IS the difference? I still don’t get it, and I used to live with someone who worked for a froyo chain.**

Stiles stood in front of it, checking his phone and biting his lip as he looked around. He had another boy with him, a Hispanic-looking teenager with shaggy hair and an uneven jaw line, who seemed to be playing a game on his phone.

> **In case it’s not obvious, I think Teen Wolf white-washed Scott like a picket fence and I’m not happy about it. At all. Celebrating diversity is going to be a small but recurring theme in this entire series.**

“Steve!” Stiles greeted as soon as Steve pulled off his helmet. Steve smiled at him while locking the helmet to his bike, adjusting his now-much-lighter bag as he walked up to the boys.

Stiles’ friend squinted at him for a moment in confusion, before his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. “Aren’t you-”

“Yes,” Stiles said immediately, snickering. “Steve, this is my best friend, Scott. Scott, this is Steve, the family friend I was telling you about.”

“Du-u-ude!” Scott said, drawing out the vowel and seeming to be talking to Stiles even as he held his hand out to Steve. “Captain America is your family friend?”

> **To non-Californians who are confused: yes, people say ‘dude’ as much as the characters in the show. In SoCal, it can get even more prevalent.**

Steve smiled politely as he glanced between their faces, between Scott’s awe and Stiles’ amusement.

“My grandma’s older brother was Bucky Barnes, remember?” Stiles said as Steve shook Scott’s hand.

“The Barnes family practically adopted me after my own died,” Steve explained. Stiles opened the door and herded them inside. “So I went looking for them when I got the chance, and I found Stiles.”

“Dude,” Scott repeated, pausing just inside the doorway. “You know the Black Widow, right?”

> **I wanted to avoid a lot of direct parallels and relationships, because they seem so contrived. So while I do think there are a tremendous amount of parallels between Scott and Steve, I also made Scott a Black Widow fanboy instead of a Captain America fanboy (though let’s face it, Steve’s a Black Widow fanboy, too). This also foreshadows what I think are a lot of parallels between Allison and Natasha.**

Steve smiled again, this time a little more genuine – and a little amused. The kid had hearts in his eyes. “Yup.”

“I don’t think he can get you her autograph, though,” Stiles said, and Steve nodded in apologetic agreement as he glanced around the tables. There were half a dozen other people in here – one family, a small group of college kids, and a pair of kids who might’ve been friends and might’ve been pre-teens on a date, it was hard to tell.

> **I like to imagine this is Liam and Mason.**

“But still! She’s awesome!” Scott said with a big grin, bounding towards the other end of the shop where a giant bin of disposable…Bowls? Cups?…sat waiting by several machines with handles and flavors on them. The other wall was full of bins of candy, nuts, and other various elaborate ice cream toppings – and there were so many.

> **Self-serve ice-cream/froyo is probably very strange to Steve (actually, I suspect most “self-serve” things are). While the number of toppings available might not be so strange, the variety, as well as the fact there are so many available in some place other than a “fancy” or high-end place, might be.**

They got their frozen yogurts, both boys unsurprisingly opting for less of the actual ice cream – or ‘froyo’ as they called it – in favor of filling up their cups with as many candy toppings as possible. They meticulously put pieces in their bowls and kept weighing them, trying to get as much candy as possible with the few scrunched up bills and spare change they pulled out of their pockets. Steve watched them with fondness as he tried the different flavors of the frozen yogurt. They reminded him of himself and Bucky, pooling their spare change – back when spare change actually had buying power – to buy themselves a treat or some drinks at the end of the work week.

> **From the looks of the brief flashback scene in the movies and the different backgrounds implied with it, it’s unlikely Steve and Bucky were really as impoverished as fandom believed before Captain America 2 came out. Especially if Steve was an illustrator of some kind, his canon job from the comic books and heavily implied in the first Captain America movie – while he wouldn’t have been wealthy or even middle-class, comic books were kicking up during this time, and it would’ve been almost a white-collar job.**

Steve ended up getting some caramel flavored thing with mixed berries on top. And, okay, maybe a few pieces of candy on the side.

> **Because that kid from Brooklyn is still inside Steve, and still has a bit of a sweet tooth.**

The lone cashier working in the front of the store didn’t pay much attention to Steve, instead monitoring the boys while Steve paid for his own concoction. As they approached their table, Steve smiled apologetically at the boys as he said, "Mind if I take this seat?". He didn't actually wait for an answer as he sat in the chair that put his back to the rest of the ice cream parlor...frozen yogurt parlor?

> **Are froyo joints called parlors? _I_ don’t even know the answer to this, so no wonder Steve doesn’t know, either. Either way, Steve's idea of an ice-cream _parlor_ (as in a place where you actually sit down to eat it, instead of getting it in a cone that you can eat on the go) would be something like this:  
> **   
> 

"Sure!" Stiles said, the boys flopping into their own chairs.

Scott nodded, but asked, "Why that one?"

Before Steve could answer, Stiles did, rolling his eyes as he said, "Because he doesn't want anyone to see him, duh." At Scott's owlish blinking, he added, "Would you want to risk being inundated by paparazzi while you're just trying to eat some froyo?"

> **While Steve is very paranoid, he’s not likely to be recognized much. Our brains are hardwired to look for a few faces at a time – so people we know/are familiar with. Unless you are actively paying attention to faces to see if it’s a face you know, you won’t recognize people in passing unless you really know them. So while really big Captain America fans who look at his face a lot might recognize Steve out of uniform and out of context, most people wouldn’t.**

Scott snorted, but also nodded, taking a spoonful of his creation that was more candy than cream.

> **This is why Steve could walk through an entire museum exhibit dedicated to him and his friends with pictures of himself everywhere, and have only one person, one _kid_ , recognize him even though he wasn’t actively disguising himself. People weren’t looking for him, so they didn’t see him.  
> **   
> 

Stiles smiled, and turned to Steve. "So, what are you up to, today?"

Steve took a bite of his frozen treat – it was good, though he still didn't get why Tony was obsessed with it. "I don't really have any plans. Your dad suggested I come out here to keep you out of trouble, but it doesn't look like you're going to get into any. You don't even have anything to get into trouble with."

> **In this, Stiles is a little more related to Steve than to Bucky. Steve was always the one getting into trouble with Bucky pulling him out, and Scott is the one who used to pull Stiles out of trouble when Stiles did something stupid.**

Scott snorted. "Dude, Stiles can be buck naked and still get into trouble."

The other boy looked down thoughtfully at his frozen yogurt. "Actually, I can think of a few situations where being naked is what gets me into trouble in the first place-"

"That wasn't a suggestion!" Scott yelped.

"I'm just saying," Stiles said, clearly goading Scott, pausing only to wink at Steve. "We could spice up the homecoming game with a bit of streaking-"

"No!" Scott said, looking mortified at the thought.

"C'mon-"

"Stiles, we'd get arrested!" Scott pointed out. "How awkward would it be if your dad had to arrest you for public nudity?"

> **I am sorely tempted to write a deleted scene about this, just for the sheer hilarity of the Sheriff having to arrest Stiles for streaking. Except now I’m thinking of Stiles going streaking specifically to cheer up Lydia after her three-day run throughout the woods, and goddamnit plotbunnies, I’m literally an overtime student right now, I do not need this shit. -_-**

Stiles' entire face twitched at that mental picture, and Steve snorted into his caramel-slathered berries.

"That would be kind of awkward," Steve agreed.

"...we'd have to wait until Dad wasn't on duty," Stiles said, starting to speculate.

"Dude, the deputies will call him if they arrest you," Scott pointed out.

> **Bucky and Scott both have a lot of practice in talking down their favorite trouble-makers.**

Steve watched, unobtrusive and entertained, as Stiles came up with increasingly elaborate plans to run wild and naked through the school, while Scott kept poking holes in those plans.

Unobtrusive, entertained, and a little heartbroken. If he thought just the pictures of them on Facebook reminded him of himself and Bucky, that was nothing compared to watching these two bicker and connive in person. Stiles had definitely inherited the Barnes family penchant for elaborate schemes.

> **Which is not to say Bucky and Scott don’t get into a fair amount of trouble on their own. :P They come up with ideas, while Stiles and Steve tend to figure out how to actually do them, and also tend to get into a fair bit of trouble on their own.**

"Anyway," Scott eventually said, giving up on trying to talk sense into Stiles. "We were just gonna spend the afternoon doing lacrosse training."

Stiles coughed pointedly, and Scott rolled his eyes. "We're gonna go check on Stiles' obsession, then go train."

"Roscoe isn't an obsession!" Stiles immediately protested.

"...the fact that you named it kind of makes it an obsession by default," Scott said.

"Who's Roscoe?" Steve asked.

Stiles grinned, and Scott groaned.

> **I want it known for the record I’d made this plan/subplot with Roscoe before Season 5 started airing. I kind of expected that I would be diverging so much from canon by that point that I would basically be ignoring Seasons 5A and 5B by the time I got there. But honestly, they fall in line with my world and plans so well, I’m adapting my story to the show and making surprisingly few changes to do it. >:)**

Twenty minutes later, he stood waiting outside the only car dealership in town. He leaned against his motorbike, parked in the unmarked pavement outside the fence, as the two teenagers pedaled in on their bicycles towards him. The actual dealer who'd been eyeing Steve rolled his eyes when he saw the boys.

A portly man whose hair might've been blonde a few decades ago, he strode out of the gateway and yelled towards the boys, "Your damn jeep is fine!", just as they pulled up.

"I told him that," Scott said, panting and leaning over his handlebars.

"I know, I know," Stiles said, flailing off his bike while trying to kick down the kickstand at the same time. Stiles gesticulated at Steve and said, "I just want to show him my future car. He's a family friend."

The man narrowed his eyes at Stiles, then threw his hands up in exasperation as he turned and went back towards the office. On the way, though, Steve caught a glimpse of his face, and as soon as he turned away from the boys, the man was not nearly as irritated as he was acting.

> **Mr. Keller is not actually much of an old grump, but this town needs a resident old grump and somehow that task has fallen to him. Probably because most of the teens in the town get their first cars from him, so he’s often the gateway for teenagers to expand the breadth and depth of their adolescent idiocy. With a position like that, who else could be the old town grump? :P**

Scott rolled his eyes as he also slipped off his bike, rolling it over and parking it neatly by Steve's. Then he glared at Stiles until the other boy sighed in long-suffering and did the same.

Stiles all but ran through the gateway as Scott and Steve followed at a more sedate pace, both walking quietly as Stiles wove them through all the cars. Used and New were mixed together, the lot instead organized by type of car – SUV, minivan, sedan – and then further sorted by color. All the way in the back were a variety of jeeps, trucks, and all-terrain vehicles.

In the absolute back corner, Stiles stopped by a baby-blue jeep. It was most definitely used, but kept in good condition.

> **And a very noticeable shade of blue. Like, impossible to miss. The Sheriff was happy about that, and Stiles regretted it once he started needed to sneak around. But like hell is he going to besmirch his mother’s favorite color. ~~(The Stockholm Syndrome runs too deep for that.)~~**

"Mr. Keller's holding it off the market until the end of the year, and my dad already promised to cover half. I just have to save up enough for the other half by then and it's mine. I've already got about a third of what I need, too!"

He grinned, actually patting the jeep like a beloved steed.

The jeep didn't have a big price tag sticker on it like most of the other cars, but the price was still listed on the paperwork in the window, which Steve leaned in to look at.

"Why this jeep?" he asked, peering at Stiles over the hood. "It looks like you could get plenty of other cars for a better price."

Scott leaned against the front bumper as Stiles looked towards the driver's seat, his small smile at odds with the sudden sadness in his eyes.

"This was my mom's car," he murmured.

Oh.

Steve took a step back, taking in the jeep and trying to figure out what Bucky's niece would've seen in it. "This was Claudia's?"

> **After I posted this, I regretted “Bucky’s niece”. I really should’ve gone with “Rebecca’s daughter”. Ah, well, you live and you learn, right?**

Stiles nodded. "Me and Dad had to sell it a while back. But that was years ago. Now, Mr. Keller agreed to hold onto it for as long as he can, even if someone else gives him a better price." Then he snorted, amused and nostalgic in equal measures. "Not that many have, people don't appreciate the classics."

"You must've loved this car," Steve said.

Scott snorted, but Stiles ignored him. "Yup! This was the car that dropped me off to my first day of preschool, and then my first day of elementary school. This was the car wherein I learned how to sing to the radio, where I learned how to tie my shoes, where I first learned how to read by looking at the street signs-"

"-where he once peed his pants after too many slushies," Scott continued, smirking. Stiles turned to glare at Scott while Steve snorted. Scott grinned when he caught sight of Stiles' irritation.

> **This car is almost as familiar to Scott as it is to Stiles. It’s a hell of a lot more familiar to Scott than any vehicle of his father’s ever was.**

"Anyway," Stiles said, drawing out the world syllable by syllable as he turned back to Steve. "I practically grew up in this car. Dad was originally gonna hold onto it for me, but uh – Mom's medical bills were...a lot. So selling the car covered most of them, but no one else wanted the jeep for years. Since Mr. Keller knew my mom – she was one of his first customers when he opened this place – he took it off the market when I got my learner's permit. I'll get my license on my sixteenth birthday and then come here and get my jeep!"

"That's nice of him," Steve said. "When's your birthday?"

"End of November," Stiles said, patting the jeep goodbye and turning back towards the gate. Scott walked alongside Stiles, this time, as Steve followed both the boys. "Just a bit after Thanksgiving."

"It'll always be easy to find in a parking lot," Scott mused, with a sidelong smile at Stiles. That was true – even with the jeep all the way in the back, it's color definitely made it stick out in the car lot. Why everyone's cars were only a few colors, these days, Steve just did not understand.

> **The earliest cars in America – Model T’s – were black because that was the most economical way to paint a car. Once the technology came through to cheaply paint cars bright colors, Americans took it and ran, which is why Steve grew up surrounded by bright, colorful cars.  
> **   
>    
>    
>  During the 70’s, Americans started to take a more ecological and economical perspective on cars (especially due to the gas crisis). On top of that, it was the Bicentennial (1976, the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence), so when those two combined, the top three popular car colors became red, white, and blue. The last few decades brought along white, black, and gray as part of the growth of gadgetry and personal technologies that were usually chrome, black, and white – in other words, people trying to look ‘futuristic’. The end result being that red, white, blue, black, and silver are the most popular and common car colors today. 

"My car is going to be the best car in the parking lot," Stiles sniffed, turning to walk backwards for a bit. "Even better than Jackson's."

"And Jackson is...?" Steve asked.

"Getting a Porche on his sixteenth birthday," Stiles grumbled.

Steve's eyebrows rose.

"His family's got a lot of money," Stiles said, bumping into a car and weaving around it. "Because his dad is a prick."

> **Okay, while I’m here: while they have the same initials, a defense attorney and a district attorney are NOT the same thing. A ‘DA’ most commonly refers to a _district_ attorney, not a defense attorney (which is generally just shortened to ‘attorney). Defense attorneys are typically associated with getting the most money, and defending criminals. A district attorney’s job is literally the exact opposite – their job is to represent the state and _prosecute_ criminals. They are the chief prosecutor of the county.**

Steve blinked, then looked at Scott.

> **Cops and DA’s actually usually get along (since both are trying to get criminals off the streets and into jails), but when they don’t, they _really_ don’t, since that typically only happens for political reasons. That said, based on their interaction with each other when Jackson returned from getting kidnapped, and at the crime scene at the rave, it looks like Sheriff Stilinski and Davis Whittemore actually get along with each other fine. It’s just their sons who hate each other.**

"Jackson's dad is the District Attorney, and Stiles' dad is the Sheriff," Scott explained. "So obviously, they have to hate each other on principle. Jackson just makes it easy because he's a giant douchebag."

> **As a side note, both the Sheriff’s office and the District Attorney’s office are elected positions in California (and most states in America). This is probably why the kidnapping was reduced to a restraining order – neither of them wanted that mess in the local media.**

"Ah," Steve said with a sage nod, twisting a little to get between two SUVs. "I see."

"Can you see this?" Scott said, holding out his phone with what looked like a map on it. "This is where we are now, and this is where the school is."

Steve nodded, committing the directions to memory. Outside the gate, he straddled his bike, then looked over to Stiles.

"By the way..."

"Yeah?" Stiles asked.

"...why 'Roscoe'?"

> **Do we have a canonical explanation for the name, yet? Right now, I actually headcanon that Claudia was the one who named it Roscoe, but _she_ never explained where it came from, which is why it probably also came from her own favorite male model or porn star.**

Stiles snickered as he said, "Um, an actor I like."

Scott groaned. "You don't wanna know, Steve, believe me."

"See, that just makes me want to know even more," Steve said, face smoothing out a bit.

"Really, just an actor I like, the jeep needed a name and that was the first thing that popped into my head," Stiles babbled.

"And for some reason," Scott droned. "He isn't bothered that when he needed a name for his car, the first thing he thought of is his favorite porn star."

"Scott!" Stiles yelped, and Steve chuckled at Stiles' indignation. "What if he tells my dad?"

"I think your dad knows you watch porn by now," Scott said.

> **Are there any parents out there who honestly believe their kids are NOT watching porn? Do none of them remember being teenagers?**

"No! He does not! And I want to keep it that way!" Stiles said. Then he looked at Steve, and pointed at Scott. "Lies, all lies, all of them."

"Uh-huh," Steve said. "Don't worry, dirty pictures are nothing new for me." At the boys' disconcerted looks, he added, "I was a city-boy, then I was in the army. Kind of hard to miss. Hell, I've drawn a few pin-ups, myself."

> **For much of the early 20th century, a very popular kind of porn was something called a bluesie, also known as a Tijuana bible. They were little porn comics, which got especially popular in the Great Depression. How much you wanna bet Steve drew a few of those himself?  
> **   
>    
>    
>  That is the _only_ SFW image that came up with I Googled "Tijuana bibles"! That was just the cover of one. Most of them would've looked something like [this](http://art.cafimg.com/images/Category_47886/subcat_120933/Tijuana%20Bible.jpg) (linked because it's NSFW)...  
>    
>  ...or like this Mickey and Minnie Mouse bluesie: [1](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cu6twQ1XYAAklER.jpg), [2](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-79IWdckkRXA/TzqYddNLzbI/AAAAAAAADeE/FEkmb02ss_A/s1600/tij03b.jpg), [3](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Hz09aeebuo/TzqYdzlWEKI/AAAAAAAADeM/ZtuUHVlAfI4/s1600/tij04.jpg). That's right, Captain America went to war in the era with Mickey Mouse porn. People have always been perverted little shits, we're just more obvious about it today than eras prior.  
>    
>  (And yes, this means there were almost definitely Captain America bluesies floating around at the time, too.) 

"As long as you don't tell my dad," Stiles grumbled, still sending betrayed looks at his best friend. Scott wasn't even trying to hide his amusement at Stiles' expense. "Seriously, he'll take away my computer and life as I know it will end if he found out."

Teenagers hadn't changed much since Steve's day, let alone the Sheriff's – and the Sheriff was a sharp man to boot. He probably already suspected, if not knew, what his son was up to.

> **Poll Time: what kind of porn is the Sheriff into now, or was he into when he was Stiles’ age? C’mon, there has to be a few interesting headcanons out there…**

But there was no fun in telling Stiles that, so instead he promised his silence on the matter, then pulled on his helmet as the boys pedaled away.

As Steve drove to the field where he was going to meet them, he wondered if he should name his bike.

No one would be surprised if he named it Margaret the Motorcycle, and Peggy would likely even be amused at the dubious honor.

Honestly, though, in this day and age – maybe he could get away with Bucky the Bike. It had a much nicer ring to it, and was just a little bit closer to the truth.

> **Save a bike, ride a Bucky.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't seen it yet, I've started posting the sequel to Frost Bite: **[Talking Cure](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6482827)** , Stiles' POV of Winter Wolves. There is also a new Snowflake: [Bruce Banner and the Baby Banshee](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5504363/chapters/14541112), Lydia's POV of her get-well gift.
> 
> Please let me know what you think! :)


	5. 2.2 - Steve and History

"These things have been running like crazy since the Battle of New York," Stiles said the next day. Steve cringed good-naturedly at the tune of his old theme song playing from the TV. It was a re-colored film of one of his old shows. It segued into a black-and-white clip of him and the Howling Commandos rolling into a town on top of a stolen Nazi truck, Steve and Dum Dum hanging off the sides. There was no sound of the actual event filmed, though, and with good reason.

> **Good god, could you imagine how obnoxious WWII buffs would be in our real world if a WWII hero came back from the dead to fight off aliens?  
> **   
>  Incidentally, here's a mock-up made by [@MediAvengers](https://mediavengers.tumblr.com/post/56385457396/history-channel-specials-avengers-related-history):   
>    
> 

"Bucky woulda been pissed if he realized how cheerful he looked," Steve said, pointing to where Bucky had been driving the truck. The film clip switched over to some posed pictures of Steve and his team. He looked over at the boys, who were sprawled against opposite arms of the couch. "He was yelling at me and Dum Dum to stop being hooligans and get back in the truck with the others. Threatened to keep driving and leave us behind if we fell off."

> **Bucky was basically the Howling Commando’s Derek, just with less facial hair and more swearing. Or maybe a combination of Derek and Stiles, now that I think about it…  
>  **

Stiles and Scott both laughed, nearly kicking their popcorn bowls off each other's stomachs. Steve leaned back into the arm chair he'd appropriated, since the Sheriff was off at work.

"Did you?" Scott asked eagerly. "Fall off?"

"Not this time," Steve said.

Stiles grinned, while Scott's eyes went wide. "Does this mean there were other times?"

> **Every time Steve fell off a vehicle, the Howling Commandos would speed up and make Steve chase them, because watching Steve run at super-human speeds never stopped getting old. Especially for Bucky, who was usually the one making Steve chase them – he knew what limitations Steve had to deal with for most of their lives, and he absolutely does his best to make sure Steve gets to use his new abilities as much as possible.  
>  **

"Oh, plenty," Steve said, as the credits ended and the documentary began. He sighed at the picture of him lined up with all the other Project Rebirth recruits. Steve was the shortest and skinniest in a line of soldiers whose physiques looked closer to what Steve had now. "I definitely don't miss boot camp."

> **WWII APFTs (Army Physical Fitness Tests) are hell on the knees. OW.  
>  **

Scott winced at the project footage of the recruits going through an obstacle course, the narrator describing Erskine's criteria. "I can't imagine doing that with asthma. I would've passed out."

"I _did_ pass out," Steve admitted. "Twice."

It was funny, at first. Steve kept providing commentary on the clips and photos, talking over the historian interviews. He expounded on the funnier parts of being a USO performer, what really happened inside that HYDRA base, and just how excruciating the bureaucratic nightmare of his post-raid hearing was.

> **My wrists start twitching at the thought of how much paperwork Steve’s POW rescue alone must have generated – forget all the Howlies’ antics in general.  
>  **

He smiled fondly when the documentary started digging into their backgrounds. He burned with familiar frustration when they spent so much time on Steve, but he was used to it - he did tend to attract attention like that. They tied him close to Bucky, though Steve wondered how they knew about the times Steve had tagged along with the Barnes family to their synagogue.

> **Here we see the beginnings of my convergence of Jewish!Bucky and Jewish!Stiles fanons. And honestly just me trying to incorporate more multiculturalism in general, because as much as I love them, both franchises have problems with white-washing, racism, and cultural erasure – Teen Wolf less so than MCU, but it’s still there.  
>  **

Scott smiled at that. "I tagged along with Stiles, once, when we were little."

"All the old ladies squeezed his cheeks so hard, he looked like he was blushing by the end," Stiles said, snickering as Scott stuck his tongue out at Stiles.

"And they kept shoving snacks at us," Scott added. "Kept saying we were too skinny."

"They did the same thing to me," Steve consoled.

The documentary segued into Dum Dum's family and history, then Gabe's from there. Steve blinked in surprise when after barely taking long enough to mention that Gabe was the only Howling Commando with a college degree, it shifted to Dernier.

> **Near as I can tell, this is true. Granted, we don’t actually know much about any of the MCU!Howlies in general (and in all honesty, for most of them even adding in comics background doesn’t help much), so saying anything about their backgrounds is never saying much. In the movie, Gabe mentions starting to study German, then switching over to French because the classes had prettier girls. It’s very unlikely that Gabe attended a high school that taught German (after WWI, very few high schools in America would’ve offered German at all, and even fewer would’ve been high schools with black students), and if Gabe had studied German as part of some military training/program, it was extremely unlikely he’d switch languages at all, let alone for reasons related to personal interests (and on top of that, I don’t think such programs even accepted black soldiers at the time – the army was still racially segregated). So, Gabe probably went to college as a civilian. Nothing about any of the other Howlies’ backgrounds say anything about their education, but based on comics, as well as historical context, it’s unlikely any of them had, meaning Gabe was the only one. Additionally, given that he appeared to be their signals guy, Jim Morita would’ve had a lot of specialized technical training, if not some education in his own right…meaning that the two ‘colored’ men on the team were the most educated team-members, which probably would’ve pissed off a LOT of people and would explain why we know so little about their backgrounds. In-universe, a lot of people would’ve done their best to avoid acknowledging white men being less educated than non-white peers, and the best way to do that would be to mention their backgrounds as little as possible.  
>  **

"That's it?"

"Huh?" both boys asked.

"They spent five minutes on Dum Dum!" Steve said, bewildered.

Scott frowned, and Stiles grimaced.

"It is the History channel," he said, like that meant something. When Steve looked at him for explanation, Stiles added, "They have a tendency to white-wash things."

> **No, but seriously, this is actually a major problem with the History Channel. They keep narrowing down their focus towards celebrating old white men, so more and more only conservatives and other old white men watch their channel, leading them to narrow down anymore…it’s a vicious cycle that is absolutely _butchering_ history. *history nerd rage*  
>  **

"...white-wash?" Steve asked.

"Uh, down-play racism, contributions of minority historical figures, that sort of thing," Stiles said. Scott pouted a little. "It's...a problem. With history in America in general."

> **The Trail of Tears is actually a pretty good metric for how honest/diverse an American history course will be, which is part of why I brought it up here so much.  
>  **

Steve hummed discordantly, but sat back to watch the documentary with a little more attention.

It didn't get better. A cynical part of him wasn't surprised that an American-produced documentary wouldn't devote equal attention to them all, but he still chafed at how little time they spent on Gabe. It got even worse when Steve heard all the fancy words they used to gloss over Jim's family being-

"They were interned!" Steve snapped at the screen when it cut to the commercial break - far too soon. "That - that was wrongful imprisonment, how could they barely mention..."

> **[This post](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/85982773975/justatinysootsprite-harlequinnade-what-are) does a pretty good breakdown of what Jim and his family most likely experienced in WWII. In short, his family would’ve been imprisoned at Sunny Poston, Arizona.  
> **   
>    
>    
>  There, a questionnaire put the men in a position where they would either have to agree to serve in the US Army or face a very high risk of being deported. (While the questionnaire, the deportation, and nearly everything else about the situation has been retroactively deemed unconstitutional, the forcing of men to serve in the military is still considered debatable, namely because the draft meant that men of all races were technically being made to serve in the military with no considering their will/choice).  
> 

He looked to the boys, to Stiles, who only waved helplessly at the screen and reiterated, "White-washing."

It got even worse from there. While most of Peggy's actual intelligence history was classified, most of her interactions with the team weren't. Even back then, let alone now. She held a powerful legacy to her name, and people across the world studied her intelligence craft and her skills in espionage.

And all this documentary talked about was her doomed relationship with Steve, the tragic wartime romance.

> **This probably sums up my attitude towards media in general (including fanfiction, sometimes). #aromanticproblems  
>  **

"That's Agent Carter to you," Steve grumbled under his breath at the next commercial break.

> **I am absolutely trying to find a way to incorporate the show into this universe. And since Mr. Yukimura’s actor just played a Los Angeles doctor in Agent Carter…  
> **   
>    
>  (Tom Choi playing a doctor giving Edwin Jarvis some complicated news.) 

"Huh?" Scott asked, tilting his attention towards Steve.

"They called everyone else by our last names or by a rank and name," Steve said. "But they kept calling her Peggy. If I'm Captain Rogers, then she's Agent Carter, no two buts about it. She never tolerated anyone's bullshit."

> **The thing about the names was actually kind of a big deal back then, and still is in some circles today. In a time period where it was more typical to address colleagues by surnames, with first names being only for very close friends, the fact that men often addressed women by their first name was a very subtle condescension – women were not colleagues, so they were not addressed by their last names. You’ll see this in Agent Carter – the other SSR agents call the main character ‘Peggy’ or ‘Margaret’, but call each other/everyone else by last name. (In Season 2, when they finally respect her, they call her Carter.)  
>  **

"Not even yours?" Stiles said, eyes eager for a story.

"Especially not mine," Steve said. "The one time I got mad and made a nasty comment to her, she picked up a loaded gun and pulled the trigger four times, right at me. Only reason I didn't get a bullet wound was because Howard had just given me the shield for the first time."

> **Despite what a lot of people think, I really don’t believe that Peggy shot at Steve because she was jealous, but rather because of the comment Steve made about her ‘fonduing’ with Howard. Steve had set himself apart from most men by respecting her, so immediately descending into shaming her based on sexual activity when he was upset with her made Steve turn out to be just like every other man she encountered. Steve learned, but there was a reason why it took so long for him to earn her respect back.  
>  **

"She sounds like a ball-buster," Stiles said. Steve looked over at him, but to his surprise, Stiles had an admiring look on his face, rather than a disparaging one. "Holy shit, Scott, she sounds like Lydia."

Scott choked on his popcorn, laughing. "Oh my god, this explains so much. And you two aren't even related!"

> **Steve and Stiles share a type. Ball-busting women who take no shit, and surly, muscly brunet men who keep snarking at them and saving their lives while grumbling all the way.  
>  **

Steve raised an eyebrow, and Scott said, "You and Stiles have a type."

"Curvy and dangerous and smart," Stiles said proudly. Then he deflated and added, "When they aren't pretending to be dumb because their boyfriend is an insecure bag of dicks who doesn't deserve them."

> **Lydia is like the lovechild of Jane Foster and Pepper Potts. :D  
>  **

At that little tangent, Steve yet-again looked to Scott. "She's dating Jackson," he explained.

> **Less than a week and Steve’s already figured out that it’s easier to just ask Scott to translate Stiles for him than try to untangle it, himself.  
>  **

"The guy getting a Porche?" Both boys nodded, Stiles with the glummest expression Steve had ever seen outside of a war zone.

Steve was going to try and offer some consolation, but then the documentary came back on.

At least now it wasn't going person by person, but focusing on the team as a whole.

The last half hour took a fun turn, again. Steve regaled side-stories and details about the battles, raids, and ridiculous missions they pulled off. As the narrator talked about all their noble battles alongside the French resistance movement, Steve merrily chattered about all the ridiculous ways to smuggle wine past the Germans that the resistance fighters had figured out. The trip to Poland just wasn't complete without explaining how the their plan had nearly been thwarted by cows. And surprisingly, Steve found himself able to reminisce about the last conversation he had with Bucky, their jokes about the zipline and payback for the Cyclone. His eyes stung, but as he told the story to the boys, to Bucky's grand-nephew and the boy Bucky would've taken under his wing as he'd done for Steve so long ago, Steve found no actual desire to cry.

> **There’s a reason why people call therapy ‘the talking cure’. ;)  
>  **

Was this what moving on felt like?

Despite all that, when the documentary finally ended, Steve found himself still smarting about the disparity in attention the team members had gotten.

"Sorry," Stiles said, when Steve mentioned as much. "But yeah, that's a problem everywhere."

"Other history channels?" Steve asked, confused.

"Other history, period," Stiles said, getting that particular kind of wound up and animated that preceded a lot of informative rambling. "It's a big problem in America in general. People constantly try to whitewash history, especially since Texas is a major textbook producer. Like half the country still isn't allowed to teach the Trail of Tears. And no one talks about all the war crimes in Vietnam. And-"

> **Fun fact: in 1971, Vietnam Veterans Against the War launched an investigation into war-crimes committed in Vietnam in an effort to end the war faster. This investigation was called the Winter Soldier Investigation.[No, really.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Soldier_Investigation) The character/Bucky’s alter-ego in the comics was named in reference to this. They even made a documentary about it!  
> **   
> 

"What's the Trail of Tears?" Steve asked.

The boys stared at him, Scott's jaw actually dropping.

Steve fidgeted in their shocked gazes, looking between them for answers.

Then Stiles sighed.

"One thing I should add," he said, looking at Steve and Scott, this explanation apparently being for both of them. "Is that this whitewashed history was the kind that was taught everywhere up until recently." Then he looked at Steve. "The Trail of Tears happened in the 1860's, and you don't know about it. That's how bad it is."

Steve stared, confused. "What was it?"

"That time the American government killed around six-thousand innocent people," Stiles explained. "And forcibly relocated another ten-thousand...for profit. Specifically, land."

> **Back in ye olden days of 2011, my mother was forbidden from even mentioning the Trail of Tears to a class of 5th grade students, despite the fact they’d already studied the Holocaust and thus were clearly mature enough to handle the topic. The problem was not any faculty, but the faculty fearing backlash from the parents.**

Steve gripped the armchair's upholstery harder and harder as Stiles explained about Indian relocation. That explanation segued into what he mentioned earlier, the Vietnam war crimes. He talked about all the various events that American history never covered up but never talked about, either. And he talked about how much trouble their middle school American history teacher had gotten into for even mentioning these things to her classroom.

After seventy years, he would have expected people to know better. After the war, after the Holocaust, after the Nazis and HYDRA, he would've expected people to know better. He hadn't sacrificed everyone and everything he loved just so people could continue their ignorance and repeat all the worst parts of their history.

> **Another side note: while Steve was probably very familiar with prison labor camps, there is a very real chance he didn’t know about – or knew very little about – the ‘civilian’ concentration camps (the Holocaust is usually in actual reference to). While there were rumors about concentration camps, most people actually didn’t believe them at first because they were so heinous, they were deemed impossible – too atrocious for anyone to _actually_ do – and dismissed as anti-German propaganda. It wasn’t until after the war that the true nature and extent of the camps were verified and believed by the rest of the world – by which point, Steve was in the ice.  
>  **

He couldn't believe he died for this.

> **Now, they were probably among the first things he learned about once he came out of the ice, so it’s not a shock for him to hear about it here (and if he and the Howlies ever got close to the camps before Steve went down in the ice, he may very well have known about them during the war, anyway). But I did bring this up just to emphasize how and why these things might be so shocking to Steve. He was no stranger to war crimes and human atrocity, but that doesn’t mean he won’t also be surprised – and then disappointed – by the fact other people can know about these things _and then keep doing them_.  
>  **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had kind of a crappy day. Job rejection, internship rejection, and lost my spot at a conference I was looking forward to, all in one morning. So, I would really love to hear from you guys - including any thoughts on areas where I can improve my writing, or anything you like and would like to see more of. When I say "concrit is ♥", I mean it. I want this fic to be as good for you guys to read as it is for me to write. :)


	6. 2.3 - Inhaler Feels

Steve was out 'lacrosse training' with the boys again for the second time this week. Where last time had mostly been them teaching Steve how to play the game, this time they were doing actual training for the sport.

> **Since we're talking about sports: this is probably how/why Scott and Stiles basically became lacrosse stars overnight, Scott at the beginning of Season 1 and Stiles at the end of Season 2. Strength and speed alone can't make a good athlete - it also takes strategy, agility, and knowing how to use your body to your advantage.  
> **   
>    
>    
>  Stiles really hinged on those during the championship game at the end of Season 2. It makes sense that we wouldn't see it before, since those are really difficult to demonstrate in practice or drill environments, so Finstock kept him on the bench. Meanwhile, if strength and speed were all it took to push Scott from benchwarmer to star player overnight, that meant he must've had really good agility, strategy, and maneuver beforehand - hell, he would've had to be a _master_ of it if the strength/speed boost were really all it took to make him captain material in less than two months. He probably had all that stuff down well beforehand, but he couldn't execute it because of the asthma. 

It had actually been kinda fun, using the lacrosse stick - which they called a 'crosse' - to lob balls at the boys. Stiles was a terrible goalie, but still cheerfully went along with the exercise - to make Scott feel better, according to him.

> **This, incidentally, is also why in Frost Bite (and later in Talking Cure) I often imply that Scott was learning parkour, martial arts, and gymnastics moves from well before and then throughout the events of Teen Wolf. Most body builder and track runners – people who already have a lot of speed and strength – can’t do acrobatics, and most acrobats (gymnasts, free runners, and acrobatic performers) aren’t actually super-strong or fast. The only reason why Scott would suddenly start doing backflips in the middle of lacrosse practice back in the first episode is if he already knew how from beforehand – meaning, again, he’d been doing them _before_ he got super strength (and probably did these a lot, because it’ll take longer for the asthma to start interfering with his activity than more conventional sports practices).  
> **   
>    
>    
>  This is also probably why, in canon, Scott often wins fights while Derek regularly gets his ass handed to him, even when Scott was a beta and Derek was an alpha. Derek may be stronger, but he has no idea how to use that strength. Scott wasn’t as strong, but he actually had a good idea of what to do. 

"He'll never be a better goalie than Danny," Stiles confided when Scott had been jogging his lap around the field. "But it's good for reflexes! Even non-goalie players need to be able to catch the ball."

> **Both boys, in their own way, also demonstrate a lot of strategy. Stiles is very good at planning things, while Scott seems to have a very strong grasp of game theory. Stiles' strategic skills shine in "Man vs Nature" conflicts (meaning planning on tricky environmental factors), while Scott's strategic skills shine in "Man vs Man" conflicts (meaning planning on the basis of what other people are going to do). I actually headcanon that this is why Stiles' chessboard was in his room, not the living room - he mostly plays against Scott, not his dad (who is a very smart man and fantastic detective, but that doesn't necessarily translate into planning skills - the Sheriff, thus, has been more about picking apart other people's strategies rather than making and executing his own). /tangent**

Now, Steve stood in the middle of the field, using the stick to throw the balls at the boys. He was improving his aim, and the boys were improving their reflexes. Enough that Steve even held back just a little bit less as he went. He smiled at how the boys jostled each other out of the way to catch as many of the balls as they could. At their behest, he started throwing a little farther, and at different angles and directions, giving them more and more of a challenge.

Surprisingly, Scott kept up.

> **I’m really not kidding about how difficult asthma makes sports – not because of the lung problem itself, but because of the ripple effects it has on the body. It not only destroys your stamina, but also makes building muscle nearly impossible because you can't get enough oxygen to them. My legs literally start to freeze up if I run too much because my muscles are just not getting oxygen, because my lungs are about as good as pre-S1 Scott's lungs and unfortunately, I have not been bitten by a werewolf yet so I’m stuck with them as they are.**

Granted, his breathing hadn't been too great thus far. But not being able to breathe had never stopped Steve before, and he couldn't chide Scott for not letting it stop him, now.

If he were being honest, Steve had actually forgotten that Scott even had asthma…

…right until the boy started wheezing.

> **In retrospect, I think I missed a golden opportunity here. I focused so much on Steve remember this as a dual situation – him and Bucky, projected onto Scott and Stiles – that I didn’t really focus on how Scott’s asthma attack might’ve evoked some serious sense memories for Steve. I wish I’d described Steve remembering his own attacks and almost re-experiencing them even as he prepared to help Scott. Ah, well, you live, you learn. :)**

It wasn't all that noticeable, at first. Scott was still running and jumping, trying to snatch balls out of the air. When Scott happened to come close, Steve heard the familiar hitch in his breathing that used to mean an imminent break in his own activities, way back before Project Rebirth.

But Scott wasn't slowing down at all. And since trying to ease up or slow things down for him would've been the height of hipocrisy, Steve didn't try. He just kept a closer eye on Scott, and he knew he wasn't the only one. Stiles started trying to keep a closer eye on him, too, only taking his gaze away when trying to make a catch.

> **Steve is the kind of guy who will let people hang themselves by their own disabilities before helping them, unless they explicitly ask him for it – not because he thinks they deserve it or need to learn, but because he knows how much someone trying to help always pissed him off. Before Rebirth, he’d rather struggle than let someone else do things for him. I might be projecting, though. Just a little bit. Scott is generally just a helpful human being and tries to help everyone with everything – often backfiring, because while he may also be familiar with that kind of frustration, it won’t be at the forefront of his mind if offering help to someone with a disability, like he once had.**

Yet somehow, it still caught Steve by surprise when a few minutes later, Scott fell to his knees, breath whistling with the effort it took to get air in and out of his lungs.

Steve dropped his crosse as he ran to Scott's side, heart breaking at the familiar combination of panicked frustration and exasperation in Scott's eyes. He'd seen that look in the mirror for most of his life.

"Hey, hey," he said, crouching down by the boy. It had been years since he last got helped through an asthma attack - three years or seventy, just a few days before he met Dr. Erskine and Bucky shipped out to Europe. But Steve still remembered how it went.

> **Most old-timey asthma treatments would run along the same lines of how we treat congestion today – namely calming down and slowing ones breath, steam, etc. The most portable neubulizers back then looked a lot like this (and were of limited efficacy):  
> **   
> 

Or at least, he thought he did.

Because just as he was about to place his hands on Scott's chest, sternum and diaphragm like Bucky used to do, Stiles came running from the direction of their bikes and bags. He was clutching…something in his hand. It was some kind of bent tube, with something like another tube or a cannister inside of the long end of it.

> **It took me a ridiculously long time to describe an inhaler without actually saying what it was or anything related to what it was. I feel like I still missed the mark on it, though.**

As stiles approached, he pulled a cap off the short end as he fell to his knees beside Scott.

He jammed the thing into Scott's hand. Without even looking, Scott wrapped his lips around the short end and pushed down on the cannister. There was a hissing noise as Scott tried to breathe in-

No, not tried - did.

> **I want it known for the record that I had already planned for lots of inhaler feels LONG before Season 5A was chock full of them. (Where did they go in 5B?!)**

Steve stared, stunned, as Stiles tapped a steady rhythm against Scott's chest, and Scott breathed.

He breathed in, impossibly deep against the wheezing of just a moment before. He held his breath for a moment, then breathed out, with only the barest hitch in his breath as the precious air escaped. He took another deep breath, and let that one out, too, with that little hitch still there.

> **This hitching comes from the diaphragm…I don’t think it’s _actually_ clenching, but it sure as hell feels like it. Ugh. I used to have slight stomach aches after bad asthma attacks because of this. :(**

Then Stiles said, "C'mon, Scott, just one more." Scott pressed down on the cannister again. There was another hiss, and another deep breath, and another, this time without even the hitch. Two more deep breaths later, Scott pulled the tube away from his mouth.

Less than three minutes from the start of his asthma attack, and it was just…gone.

> **It’s not actually gone this fast, but the outward, visible symptoms will be mitigated. Scott’s throat and lungs are still burning from the oxygen deprivation, and will be for another 5-10 minutes.**

Steve stared down at the little device as Scott murmured, "Thanks, dude," while taking the other piece of plastic from Stiles and recapping it. The boys stood up, Stiles still keeping a worried hand on Scott's shoulder.

"What is that?" Steve blurted out.

Both boys stared in askance, before Scott followed Steve's line of sight and said, "Oh, this? It's an inhaler." He looked quizzically between Steve's face and the inhaler, then handed it to Steve with a congenial shrug. "I guess they didn't have this in your day, huh?"

Steve dumbly shook his head, standing and taking it from Scott.

It was so…small.

> **This is actually what would trip Steve up the most. Devices to ease breathing did exist back in his day, but they would be big, expensive things kept in the home or in the hospital, not something you could carry around with you – meaning not something you could have when you were most likely to actually _have_ an asthma attack.  
> **   
> 

"It's a rescue inhaler," Stiles added. "An MDI - uh, meter-dosed inhaler."

> **My original plan for Talking Cure actually spanned all the way back to the first meetings with Steve, including this scene. Since I cut that, the reason why Stiles specifies here is because he thinks of nebulizers – a medication-inhaling system that did exist back in Steve’s day – as predecessors to the inhaler. While the core function is the same – turning a medication into a gas that can be breathed in – their methodologies are very different. More importantly, nebulizers were expensive (it’s doubtful Steve ever had one) and were machines kept at home. Even if Steve did have one, it’s not something he would’ve used to stem asthma attacks the way Scott does with his inhaler. While the same branch of studies that led to the nebulizers also led to inhalers, they are ultimately very different medical miracles.**

Scott frowned as he looked down at his inhaler in Steve's hand. "Wait, you had asthma before you became a supersoldier, right?" Steve nodded. "What did you guys do when you had asthma attacks?"

For a brief moment, Steve couldn't answer. He just stared at the little device that Steve would've paid in limbs for, that Bucky would've killed for. He was blindsided by the realization that these boys didn't know about all the little struggles that plagued Steve's every day for most of his life.

> **Which isn’t to say that the inhaler is some kind of miracle cure for asthma – it isn’t. It’s only a moderately miraculous mitigation of the most prominent and life-impugning symptom of asthma. But for someone like Steve, whose life was so strongly affected by that one prominent symptom, there is probably very little difference.**

That they didn't have to.

Steve swallowed and finally answered, "Breathing exercises, humidity if we could manage it, asthma cigarettes, that sort of thing-"

"Asthma _cigarettes_?" Scott asked incredulously. "Is that like, a weird name or a joke or something?"

Steve frowned. "No? Just cigarettes."

Both boys looked horrified, and Scott cried out, "But smoking _causes_ asthma!"

"Or makes it worse," Stiles grumbled, glaring fondly at Scott. Steve could see there was a story there.

He blinked, bewildered. "They…they were prescribed by my doctors."

> **These were absolutely a thing.  
> **   
>    
>    
>  These were specifically “cigarettes” that instead of tobacco, contained herbs that supposedly eased asthma symptoms. Nightshade, up to a certain extent, can reduce vascular inflammation – but whatever effect it can achieve would be mitigated or erased entirely by the fact it was being inhaled as a smoke, and the plant causes nasty side-effects like hallucination, heart problems, etc., and overdosing on these is lethal. Despite all this, because smoking was seen as such a healthy thing to do back then, asthma cigarettes were prescribed even to pre-teens to treat their asthma (or, if an asthmatic wanted to smoke but couldn’t use tobacco, they would use this in its place). 

Scott's eyes bugged wide open at that, while Stiles stared at him like he expected Steve was pulling their legs.

"No wonder you had it so bad, then," Stiles finally said, shaking his head and letting his hand drop from Scott's shoulder.

"…yeah," Steve said, turning his attention back to the inhaler, turning it over and over in his hand.

After a few moments, Steve realized the boys were still standing there with silence that was disconcerting from anyone, let alone two teenagers. He looked up to see their matching expressions of concern.

> **Thoughtful babies are trying to be thoughtful.**

They glanced sidelong at each other.

"You okay, Steve?" Stiles asked.

Swallowing down a lump in his throat, he handed the little device back to Scott. "Yeah, I'm fine, I just…" He gestured to the inhaler. "I really could've used something like that, before…" He gestured to his own body. "This."

"I'll bet," Scott said, nodding sympathetically.

Stiles made a face. "Especially if they were trying to treat your asthma with _cigarettes_."

> **The vehement disparagement towards smoking and cigarettes is also something likely to surprise Steve. Even if people may have started to understand that smoking was causing lung problems back in Steve’s day, because smoking was so common and prevalent, no one really thought of it as unhealthy. The army even included cigarettes in soldiers’ rations!**

Steve laughed.

To his own ears, it had a wet edge to it, but the boys were either oblivious or polite, as neither of them said a word about it.

Shaking himself out of his stupor, Steve focused on Scott. "How are you feeling? Should we call it a day?"

Unsurprisingly, Scott shook his head. "No, I'm fine - I can handle it. We can finish."

> **Steve is very familiar with this particular brand of stubborn.**

Steve smiled - even more so when he looked at Stiles and saw familiar echoes of worried frustration in his gaze.

> **But that doesn’t mean he never understood the impact of his stubbornness on Bucky.**

"Sure thing," Steve said. He trusted that if Stiles wasn't protesting, then Scott really could handle finishing their planned work out for the day - even if they might have to take it a little easier from here on out.

Apparently, taking care of stubborn asthmatics was a Barnes family trait.

Bucky would've been so proud.

> **will be* ;)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's either this or I actually do my homework. And I have more research done for these fics than for my homework, so clearly it's more important. :P


	7. 2.4 - Family Photos

Ensconced in the Stilinskis' living room the next day, Steve looked at the photo of Sarah's son. Clad in a Navy service uniform, he stood beside a Sarah Barnes much older than Steve remembered her. And she wasn't actually a Barnes, anymore, not by the time her only son was on his way to Vietnam.

Not when she, unbeknownst to her, was seeing her son alive for the last time.

The photo was on the TV, with a song playing, the same song as the last three photos. Apparently, it was the big hit back then.

> **In my head, when I was writing this, it was _Mrs. Robinson_ , by Simon & Garfunkel. But then it turned out that was released in 1968, and this scene would’ve probably been a few years earlier. So I now it’s [_Desolation Row_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desolation_Row) by Bob Dylan. Partly because it’s long enough to last through three or four photographs with Stiles’ commentary…mostly because there are actually tons of other references buried in the song.**  
>    
>    
>    
>  **This is meant to be as much a pop-culture education for Steve as it is telling him about the Barnes family, so when Stiles asked the Sheriff for good songs, he suggested this one. He knows how Stiles often learns more from wiki walks than being told things, and he figures that if Steve does the same, then he can learn a lot from that one song. (Which does happen later in the fic when Steve looks up _American Pie_ ). My Chemical Romance – who’ve had a few songs in Teen Wolf – did a cover of Desolation Row, but it’s shit so I’m not linking to it.**

Steve missed the sensation of a physical album, something he could hold in his hand and turn the pages of. But, he could definitely see the appeal of Stiles' preferred format. He learned more about music from the last two hours of Stiles' slideshow than from the two dozen albums Tony had sent him over the last several months.

It helped to have context, to have memories attached to the songs – even if they weren't his own.

> **This is why producers will put a lot of money into music videos, even though they actually turn a fairly limited profit – the video is to make sure that listeners have a good context memory for that song.**

Music to go with the photos, videos from more recent times, and this whole show was backed up online somewhere. According to Stiles, no matter what happened, none of this would ever be lost. If the house burned down with every family photo ever taken inside it, these pictures would still be safe and sound somewhere in the world. Steve could never doubt the appeal of that – no matter how much me missed physical photo albums.

> **…whoops. he***

"Mom said that her Aunt Sarah came to live with them a couple years after the end of the war, when her husband left her," Stiles said, continuing on with his stories about the Barnes family. "She worked as a teacher, but she had to retire when it turned out she had cancer. She didn't want to die all sick and bed-ridden, so she used up all her money traveling and stuff, and then..."

> **In retrospect, I wonder if I should’ve given Aunt Sarah frontotemporal dementia, too. Also, I probably shouldn’t have used Sarah, since that’s already Steve’s mom’s name.**

Steve nodded in understanding. "I can sympathize."

Stiles blew out a nervous breath, and a moment later, the song ended. A new one began, and with it came a new photo – this time of Claudia and the Sheriff's wedding. The song was easy-paced, but not slow, a strumming guitar that sounded almost ukelele-like, with a gentle drumbeat in the background. It made Steve want to lean back and relax, especially after the more upbeat Beatles song that had come before it.

> **I spent ages trying to decide what song in particular this should be. Then I went, “fuck it!” and decided not to pick any particular one. This is a Beatles song of your choice, but coming from later in their career, sometime in their hippie phase.**

"This was a favorite of ours," the Sheriff said. His pile of paperwork sat long forgotten on a side table as he leaned back in his armchair, looking at the picture of himself and his wife posing in front of an elaborate altar. "At least one that we could both agree on." His smile took on a dopey turn that made Steve's heart try to hide deep in his gut. "This was our first dance as husband as wife."

> **Just imagine a very mellow Johnny Cage in an army dress uniform dancing like this. Do it. I dare you. :D**

As if on cue, the next photo came up. It was Claudia and John, alone on a dance floor, surrounded by a crowd of people watching them as they only watched each other. Claudia's dress was swirling around her calves, with John laughing as he leaned into her. Glancing to his side, Steve looked at the Sheriff and would bet his shield that twenty years later, John still remembered what Claudia said that was so funny.

Steve stared, and did his resolute best not to be envious of this man, not to run away from this house and this town and this entire, goddamn century.

He tried not to wonder if this is what he and Peggy could have looked like. What song would they have chosen for their first dance?

> **I’m kind of imagining this as something Frank Sinatra, but that’s about as far as I got before I remembered that I didn’t actually have to pick out a specific song, since Steve didn’t know what it was, anyway.**

"Their next dance was to an AC/DC song," Stiles said with a snicker. "You'll see that video in a few minutes. It's hilarious, Dad has this most constipated look on his face-"

"Your mother had many, many wonderful traits," the Sheriff said, with the comfortable voice of an old argument. "But good taste in music was not one of them."

> **The Sheriff brought the good music, Claudia brought the good movies, and now Stiles is a snob. :)**

Would Steve and Peggy have fought about music? Who is he kidding, of course they would've. They would've fought, and settled on something perfectly in the middle. Then the Commandos would've found a way to hijack the music and play something completely ridiculous anyway, and Bucky would've been warning Steve not to step on Peggy's toes while they danced and-

Well.

> **Steve absolutely imagined what his wedding to Peggy would look like, and the rest of their life together. He didn’t just lose the potential for his life when he went down in the ice, he literally lost all his dreams.**

It was never going to happen, now. Peggy was an old woman, wed and widowed twice over with no room in her life for a long-lost lover returned from the dead. And Bucky and the Commandos all _were_ dead.

Sometimes, Steve wished he still was, too.

(Maybe a bit more than sometimes.)

> **Vague suicidal ideation was absolutely a critical part of this chapter, to emphasize how much that declines over the rest of this story. Steve already had plenty of reasons to _not die_ , but Stiles is what gave Steve a reason to _live_.**

"I've heard a lot of that kind of music," Steve said, because now was not the time to start crying. "I'm not sure how you dance to it."

"You don't," the Sheriff drawled.

> **The Sheriff is very much of the opinion that modern ‘dancing’ is really just jumping and flailing around, not actual dancing.**

"You've heard a lot of _classic_ rock?" Stiles asked, emphasizing the adjective while looking at his father, even though his question was directed at Steve.

"Tony likes it," Steve said.

"See!" Stiles cried out, flailing in Steve's general direction. On the TV, the photo changed again, and again, several shots of John and Claudia dancing to whatever this song was. "Even Iron Man likes it!"

"Tony Stark isn't exactly known for having good taste," the Sheriff retorted. He finally looked away from all the photos of his wedding to focus on his son. "Have you watched his Expos?"

> **While I’m here: where did the Expo even happen? A lot of people – and apparently canon? – seem to assume it happened in Manhattan. Based on the movie, it didn’t take long for Tony to get from Malibu to the expo once he got the suit working again – but that’s almost 2,800 miles (4,500 km)! No way he made that in under an hour or even just a few hours. Also, there seemed to be a _lot_ of space at and surrounding the expo, and not many tall buildings, and that kind of urban sprawl is all particular to Los Angeles. I honestly just assumed the Expo was in Los Angeles until I saw people mention Manhattan in other places (namely fanfic).**

"Have I watched them," Stiles scoffed, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of the question. The Sheriff rolled his eyes.

Steve smiled sadly. The next photo of Stiles' fancy slideshow was a picture of a massive wedding cake, Claudia and John both poised with cake knives and ready to slice into it.

"Tony plays it in his lab, a lot," Steve said. "At least when it's just him. Bruce probably would've liked this song more. I'll have to ask."

The gentle song came to an end.

It was followed by the kind of noise that Tony adored and Bruce fondly complained about in every other text message he sent Steve. On screen, a young John groaned as Claudia laughed, waving her friends over from where the bridal party stood. Steve watched as several other couples and groups flooded the dance floor. Claudia kept poking and tugging John into dancing – though it looked more like jumping around than anything else. She was undeterred by the unholy combination of lead limbs and two left feet that her new husband was displaying. Instead, after a minute of unsuccessful goading, she kicked off her shoes, tossing them towards the couple's private table. The bride stood on the groom's feet, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and leaning into his chest as he held her close. Swaying in tune with the rock music, they were a spot of serenity in the middle of the ecstatic chaos of their friends leaping around to racket masquerading as music.

> **I like to imagine the song is ‘Shoot to Thrill’. ;)  
>    
>  **

"The music was terrible," John said, voice soft against the hard edges of the song. "But sometimes I think I liked this dance the most."

Steve heard a sniff from Stiles' direction, and pointedly didn't look. Instead, he watched the young Claudia and John 'dance', trying desperately not to wonder if Bucky would've liked this music, what he would've done at his niece's wedding.

Probably try to make Steve dance, too.

> **If Steve’s dream life had come true and he and Bucky lived to the ripe old age of ‘old enough to go to Claudia’s wedding’, then Bucky would absolutely drag Steve onto the dancefloor to show these damn young’uns what dancing really is. Steve would make Claudia take Bucky on an uncle-niece ‘dance’ (re: jumping and flailing around) in revenge.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please let me know what you think! And here, since I'm taking forever to update, have a [sneak preview](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/143370840710/talking-cure-ch-2-preview) of the next chapter of Talking Cure. Reblogs are ♥! :)


	8. 2.5 - Keepsake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM DONE WITH MIDTERMS! My last midterms EVER!!! (Well, at least as an undergrad. Who knows what law school will bring, if ever get there.)

Steve had to leave.

The Sheriff sighed, Stiles protested, and even Scott asked if Steve was sure, but eventually they all accepted it when Steve said he had to leave.

(He had to leave now before he never wanted to again.)

> **I originally had a lot more rambling here in which Steve seriously considers abandoning SHIELD, the Avengers, and all his work/life just to move here, before realizing that he was too much a soldier to ever do that. It was a lot of Steve angsting about how much he’s changed and how he can’t leave the war. But I really liked how he came to this realization in Avengers 2, so I cut it out of here to use it later.**

Steve still needed to go check-in on Jim's family. Jim's granddaughter had already offered a tour of the vineyard, as well as some old photos that no museum had come asking for yet.

> **With any luck, the Morita family is no longer is Fresno. :P**

He wanted to get those photos before some school or museum did. He wanted to see the west coast as a tourist, as he would've done before the ice. He wanted to dry up all his tears before he had to go back to doing SHIELD's wetwork.

He needed to pack up Steve Rogers before he had to go back to being Captain America.

So here he was, getting ready to leave, cleaning up after himself and packing for the last stretch of road-

> **There’s an old army joke that the military is occupational training for homelessness. This is largely a sad commentary on just how many war veterans end up homeless after discharge, but it’s also a joke that while in the field, soldiers and marines are “homeless” (carrying all their stuff with them while making their way through the world). This line was originally a lot of rambling about Steve packing up what he feels is all his “real” stuff – while he has a new apartment, it doesn’t feel like home and the stuff inside it doesn’t feel like his. Some clothes, sketchbook, basic amenities, and little keepsakes – these are the only belongings he really feels are his. (And his shield, but he also, at this point, actually assumes that he doesn’t technically/legally own the shield, but that SHIELD did since it was originally an SSR commission, and he’s just the person using it because he’s the only person who _can_ use it.) Basically, Steve is “homeless” because he lost his home when he went down in the ice, and now he’s carrying all his ‘real’ worldly belongings with him while he’s on the road – but he almost felt like he had a home. It became too rambly and convoluted, detracted from the scene, and I felt like it was a little too soon for Steve to acknowledge how home-like Beacon Hills was for him just yet, so I cut it out.**

"Hey, Steve?"

Steve looked up from where he was trying to stuff his sketch book under his sweatpants in his duffel bag.

Stiles fidgeted in the doorway to the guestroom, holding his hands behind his back.

"Yeah?" Steve asked, setting the sketchbook down. He was probably going to unpack and repack half the bag, anyway – like he always did. He still wasn't sure if he believed Bruce's claim that he could pack things right the first time.

> **I am convinced that packing a stuffed bag right the first time around/in one go is a super-power. Unless whatever suitcase I’m packing is going to be half-empty, I always inevitably half to pull out half the stuff after I pack it to rearrange things and make them fit. :|**

"Uh, I, um. I know it's weird, but I wanted to give you something, y'know, a gift, or...a souvenir, I guess? Except I couldn't think of anything. Well, I couldn't think of anything that I could actually afford. And it's not like we have much going on here for there to be souvenirs of. Unless you wanted a fancy leaf from the preserve or something, I didn't...Um, anyway-"

His hands came around, revealing that one was holding something out to Steve.

An inhaler.

> **There was originally a lot more rambling from Stiles. Honestly, my first draft of this scene was basically a shit-ton of rambling that I had to cut out to make it read-able.**

Steve took it with a heavy grain of confusion. "What...doesn't Scott need this?"

Stiles shook his head. "It's a really old one, a dead one. Scott lost it, got another one, then found it again, and used it dry and never remember to take it back for disposal. I asked him for it."

> **Inhaler = the plastic device. The actual medicine is in the metal canister (the thing you push down on like a button), and when you get a refill, it means changing out the canister, not getting a new inhaler entirely (unless you got it in the first place through shady shenanigans like “trials” or “samples”, in which case you’ll probably get a new one altogether once you actually go to a pharmacy or if continuing to use those connections).**

"I suppose I'll definitely remember playing lacrosse with you guys," Steve said. Was this a weird 21st century thing he was missing part of?

Stiles was shaking his head.

"It's not about that," Stiles said. "I couldn't think of a good 'something to remember us by' gift. So I thought of what other kinds of gifts there are, and I thought of welcome gifts. This is more of a...welcome to the 21st century gift."

Steve tilted his head, hoping Stiles would elaborate. Because out of everything that could exemplify modernity...why an inhaler?

> **This is the beginning of me always writing Steve and Scott as tilting or cocking their head when they are confused, while Bucky and Stiles tend to make a face.**

"Just – you had this look on your face when we were watching the history channel and talking about the war and stuff," Stiles said, waving towards Steve's face apologetically. "Like...you were sad."

Steve swallowed. "Stiles-"

"Not like that!" Stiles blurted out. What did that even mean? Not like what? "I mean – you..." Stiles took a deep breath. "You pretty much died to stop one genocide, and then another one happened anyway. Several happened, just in other places and times."

> **I legitimately do not remember what Stiles originally assumed Steve meant. I know that originally, this chapter was also going to be the start of Talking Cure (Stiles’ part of the story), so I know I wrote this line with the intention that Stiles’ internal monologue was going to assume Steve was thinking something. But I now have no idea what that assumption was supposed to be.**

Way to remind him.

"And – I know you're disappointed," Stiles said. Steve opened his mouth to protest out of habit, but then closed it before he could insult Stiles' intelligence. "I would be, too. But that's not everything, you know? The last few decades hasn't just been everyone forgetting their history and doing all the stuff you were trying to stop. It's been awesome things, too. And not just music and comic books and stuff – awesome as they are. The technology behind rocket missiles is also behind rocket ships, and we use those to go into space. Diseases and medical conditions and all this other bad stuff that gutted your generation doesn't even appear in mine. I mean, when you were growing up, people were terrified of polio. Now, me and everyone else my age just got a few shots when we were little and we never have to think about it again."

> **The rocket missiles/rocket ships thing was supposed to be a subtle call-forward to Maya’s quote from Iron Man 3, about the original scientist saying that the rockets worked and they just landed on the wrong planet. It became a little too subtle.**

Steve looked at Stiles, then stared down at the inhaler.

"I just...I think you don't need help remembering places you've been or people you've been with. But...it must be hard. To remember all the good things that have happened over the last few decades, when your job is to deal with all the bad stuff."

Stiles waved his hand towards the inhaler. "So this isn't to remind you about me or Beacon Hills, because I think you've got that covered. This is to remind you that however bad things got over the last seventy years, they got good, too. We couldn't beat politics, but we could beat polio. The rocket technology that brought cities down into craters also brought humanity up to the moon. Terrorist attacks and asthma attacks are always going to be a problem, but at least one of them can be stopped in its tracks with practically the push of a button. And maybe that'll make stopping the other one just a little bit easier."

> **I actually feel like this speech was a little too formal and well-written to be believable dialogue. I honestly feel like this whole section just does not sound like Stiles at all. I think I planned for him to have literally written this speech beforehand and practiced it or something? I hope that was my original plan, because this is crappy characterization otherwise. :|**

Steve wrapped his fingers around the tiny medical device that would've changed his whole world growing up. His eyes were burning as he stepped forward to wrap Stiles in a tight hug.

"Thank you," he barely-didn't-sob into Stiles' ear.

> **Oh my god, this line was terrible. “Barely-didn’t-sob”? Seriously, I feel so bad that people kept saying this part of the fic made them cry when I feel like this was one of my worse scenes in this entire fic. D:**

Stiles froze up in surprise, then wrapped his arms awkwardly around Steve's shoulders, patting his back. Steve sniffed, his humor equal to his amazement, Because this kid understood Steve's frustration within a week better than anyone else had in months. How did a hyperactive teenager see what dozens of adults and professional psychologists had missed?

> **This was also a precursor to Stiles being highly intuitive.This is a very good summation of a lot of my interpretation of Stiles as a character (though I don’t completely back everything in my post or assume it is canon, and this is still only a fraction of my Stiles feels, headcanons, and thoughts).**

"No problem," Stiles said, sounding a little unsure but genuine nonetheless.

Steve stepped back. He looked down at the little piece of plastic and metal in his hands, the one that helped millions of people, millions of kids, breathe just a little bit better – and do everything else just a little bit easier. And he knew how much it changed not just the lives of those with tricky lungs, but their friends, too.

> **Seriously, one of the biggest changes an inhaler can have is that asthma stops holding you back from doing shit with your friends. Some of my fondest memories, from ~~intoxicated~~ hiking to my year as an army cadet, would not have been possible without my inhaler.**

Bucky and Stiles alone were proof of that.

It didn't come in time to change Steve's world, but it did come in time to change Scott's.

All the fancy gadgets this new millenium had to offer, and this was the first one that made Steve feel like his sacrifice had been worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna go see _Civil War_ tomorrow. Ya'll excited?


	9. 3.1 - Steve and Stiles Text a Lot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's really heavy on the references, annotations, and other explanations. My historical nerdery really came out in here.

Steve had honestly feared that his phone number would end up publicized when he gave it to Stiles. Nothing against the kid, but Steve remembered being a teenager desperate to impress everyone.

It never happened.

> **I can’t believe I forgot it, but there was supposed to be a line here which reveals that Steve gave Stiles a ‘shell’ number, or a fake/redirecting number, so that if that particular phone number were ever discovered (i.e. if Stiles leaked it, if someone stole his phone, if he was kidnapped, etc.) then that particular number could be deactivated, while Steve’s “actual” phone number/phone account could remain the same and he wouldn’t have to deactivate an account and go give his new number to everyone he knows.**

Instead, Stiles texted him all the time – more than Tony, even, which was not really that surprising once Steve thought about it.

It was mostly little things. Pictures of his daily life – usually him and Scott goofing off – and pictures of food or drinks that Steve _just had to try it's amazing omg_. Just before his school started for him, Steve often came back from missions to find long strings of text messages about how much school sucked and teachers sucked more and homework sucked the most.

The first time Steve happened to check his personal messages in SHIELD was just after a review meeting. He ended up chuckling to himself at the picture of a stack of textbooks accompanied by horrified-looking 'smiley faces'. Emoticons, that's what they were called.

> **‘Checking messages’ or otherwise engaging so deeply into personal communications while at work would probably be a little strange to Steve. While overlap has existed as long as humanity itself, by and large the divide between ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ was much stronger in Steve’s day. Personal communication (letters and telegrams, basically) would be left at home, to deal with at home (not counting something like bringing a letter to read during lunch or something).**

"What's so funny?" Natasha asked, peeking over Steve's shoulder to his phone. Steve tilted the phone to show her, trying to keep the screen away from the sunlight coming through the glass walls of the Triskelion's fancy elevator. From Steve's other side, Clint also leaned in. "Oh, your kid in California?"

> **Seriously, one of my favorite things about Captain America 2 was that Nat was such a great friend to Steve, but no one was forced into a pointless, shoe-horned subplot. The kissing scene honestly did not feel romantic to me at all – it felt like an honest evaluation of both characters being sexually attractive, as well as a really good lampshade on the fact that per Hollywood tradition, they are ‘supposed’ to be a couple…but it was so awkward and fake the one time they acted like it, it makes perfect sense there was no stupid romantic subplot in the. Nat & Steve BROTP for life. I’m going to be pissed if there are any shoe-horned romantic subplots in Civil War. >.**

"He's not my kid," Steve said. "He's just..." He paused, trying to figure out how to describe Stiles in relation to himself. "A friend."

> **Steve isn’t quite close enough to blatantly name himself as Stiles’ family/(grand-)uncle just yet. But he’s getting there. :)**

"Poor kid," Clint said, shaking his head while looking at the picture. "Makes me kinda glad I never went to high school."

> **I took his 616 background and had Clint raised in a circus after he and his brother, Barney, ran away from CPS when their parents died (killed by their drunk, abusive father). In his teens, when he was betrayed by his brother and mentors, he went into a life of crime. Here, I smush it with Ultimate background, and have him leave behind that life of crime by going into the military in early adulthood. Then I veer back towards 616 canon, and have him become Deaf due to something that happened while he was in the Army. At this point, I go entirely into my own headcanon, and say Clint was honorably discharged, but the veteran support/benefits were not to support him, so he became a mercenary. Then I dive back into Clint/Coulson fanon and assume that SHIELD picked him up from here.**

Steve snorted, and started composing a text back. He had to remind himself to forgo greetings, to act as if this was a chat.

Which it was. It took Steve ages to understand that texting wasn't meant to be correspondence, but conversation.

> **Despite what some fanon would have you believe, Steve wouldn’t write long letters in a text. Rather, he would probably treat it like a telegram, and this quickly accustom himself to text-based slang and abbreviations (if he knew anyone who used it – I never do, and neither do most of the people I text on a regular basis – so I wrote Stiles the same way). The only real difference for him would be the usage of greetings (hi/goodbye), which were still used even in short messages like telegrams (barring urgent messages or technical ones), but are not the norm in text messages.**

And in this one, his first response was exactly what he'd say if he'd been with Stiles right now.

_Wait until you get to college._

> **I assume Steve went to college – some art school – but then never finished because he couldn’t afford to stay in art school. But this was an era when getting a good job without a college degree was a lot easier, so he still got work as an illustrator, probably with some subsidiary of the WPA (Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency).**

By the time Steve got down to the garage and was about to get on his bike, his phone vibrated with a new message.

Instead of any words, Stiles' response was a series of crying emoticons. Steve couldn't help but smile, and decided to wait before scaring Stiles with the kinds of documents he had to read on a daily basis for work.

It wasn't just day-to-day life, either. Stiles turned out to be a valuable wellspring of information. His explanation of memes made so much more sense than Tony's – by virtue of making sense at all. He sent Steve entire websites full of them, and picture after picture of the most popular ones.

Steve sent back the picture of the Grumpy Cat, telling Stiles that it woulda been Bucky's favorite.

> **I spent a ridiculous amount of time waffling between “would have” and “woulda”. I went for the latter to indicate that Steve is slipping slowly back into vernacular, becoming more casual and relaxed around Stiles. Also, I dare you find me a meme that embodies Bucky more than Grumpy Cat – especially Bucky as a sergeant, since he’s the poor sod who would’ve been in charge of keeping the Howlies alive in spite of all their best efforts otherwise.**

The childish part of Steve enjoyed the sensation of trying not to laugh the first time he asked if he could 'has' an MRE while waiting to go to Damascus with a joint operations team. Tony looked ready to cry.

> **MRE = Meal, Ready to Eat, which is the modern term for military field rations.**

"No," Tony said, shaking his head woefully, standing in front of the jet. Then he narrowed his eyes when he noticed Steve's mirth. "That's not – Steve, you can't be a troll, you can't."

Steve frowned. "How am I a troll?"

Tony threw his hands up in the air in frustration and stalked to the pilot's seat. Tony couldn't take the Iron Man suit all the way to Syria, so he was flying the jet, instead.

> **Tony probably could, but why bother when he would have to slow down for a jet full of other people and equipment, anyway?**

With a sigh, Steve texted Stiles, _What's a troll?_

A few minutes later, his phone chimed and he read, _Mythological troll or Internet troll?_

_Well, I know what the mythological one is._

He paused, then added, _I just got called a troll._

Then they were up in the air, where they couldn't use cell data. By the time Steve landed, he got his explanation.

_Online, a troll is someone who posts or says aggravating stuff just to start an argument, piss people off, etc etc. Gets used in other places to mean someone who is messing things up just for the sake of messing things up. In real life, it's what you call someone who makes a joke or whatever just to see a funny reaction or make someone uncomfortable. It's a pretty broad spectrum._

And then another message right after:

_So basically, a troll is someone who likes to mess with people. Can mean the funny way when used in real life (as in it can be funny for the troll and everyone else). But mostly means the annoying sense online (so only the troll and some fellow trolls think they're funny, everyone else just hates them)._

And finally:

_Also gets used as a verb, like "to troll someone", and this is more likely to mean funny than annoying._

> **I feel like these texts really encapsulated Stiles’ character a lot better than his inhaler speech from the previous scene/chapter. His strength isn’t in being the most knowledgeable or having the most information – that’s Lydia’s department – but rather in his ability to analyze, think, and put things into context. Steve knows how to Google, and Stiles knows how to send people links. But Stiles is also aware of a.) how much incorrect information comes up when you just tell someone to go Google something (I hate “look it up yourself” so much for this reason), and he knows the context or perspective Steve is thinking from – meaning he knows what kind of explanation Steve actually needs. THAT is Stiles’ strength, not technical knowledge or emotional intelligence (despite what post-S2 Stiles fanon would have you believe, he really doesn’t have any – this is more Scott’s strength).**

As everyone disembarked, Steve looked at Tony and said, "I didn't mean to troll you, you know."

He looked at Steve dubiously. "Really?"

"Really," Steve said, clapping a hand on Tony's shoulder. Hoping he was remembering the phrasing right, he added, "Ain't nobody got time for that."

Tony was still twitching by the time they got to the meeting room.

> **Incidentally, Kimberly Wilkins – the woman who originally said that line which generated one of the biggest memes of Internet history – actuallygot rich off of that one sentence. Not, like, super wealthy or anything, but she got several television appearances out of it, and later launched a law-suit due to the meme.**

Along with sending Steve useful notes – in one case literally – about the modern world, he was also an excellent background researcher for Steve...and an excellent sounding board for his tough decisions.

> **When Steve says “in once case, literally”, that’s because Stiles linked him to TV Tropes’Useful Notes. :)**

Just before Halloween, the Smithsonian asked Steve to consult on an exhibit they were developing. Steve, in turn, asked Stiles for any help with understanding all the problems with history education in America.

Blogs, books, articles – Steve was still reading through a website on his way to the meeting with the museum director, the curators, and some of the more influential fat cats financing the new exhibit.

Steve sat through some stupid, inspirational speech about how people could benefit from learning the true impact Captain America and the Howling Commandos had in WWII. After that was a more useful meeting about how much public demand there was for learning about all the Heroes of New York. With Captain America and Iron Man being at the top of the list, the exhibit could generate a lot of revenue for the Smithsonian.

Then, they asked him for his thoughts.

"Rule number one," he said. "No whitewashing."

The director twitched, puzzled. The curators, historians all of them, actually smiled and seemed relieved when he said that.

> **Believe it or not, most American historians are well aware of all the bullshit (namely racism, nativism, and genocide) that permeates American history. It’s just that no one notices because most mechanisms of presenting history – documentaries, movies, museums, etc. – are actually controlled by other people, non-historians who have ideologies and agendas that need supporting. Steve coming in and immediately demanding ‘no white-washing’ is probably a relief to these historians.**

"What exactly do you mean, Captain?" one of the donors asked, eyes narrowing.

"I've seen a lot of books and documentaries about me and my team, how history has remembered us," Steve said. "And most of them downplay the contributions of my teammates who weren't white and gloss over their unique challenges." He pursed his lips. "They deserve better than that. A lot better. So don't whitewash – and prioritize me over them as little as possible."

Half the people at the table started to protest, so Steve held up a hand, quieting them instantly.

"My advanced abilities are helpful in a war, but that's not why I was able to accomplish somuch," Steve said. "I was nothing without my team, then and now. History has forgotten that. Generations have grown up not understanding the extent of the challenges we faced and _real_ sacrifices we made. It's your job as historians to remind them, and to teach them."

> **Super-strength and speed are not what makes Steve a super _soldier_ – that is from his strategic daring and tactical ingenuity, which are enabled by his enhanced body, but not a product of it.**

It would be a lie to say the meeting went smoothly after that, but it went a lot smoother than if Steve hadn't made that little aside. The curators and historians themselves were in Steve's boat, well aware of the problems with history education and more than eager to fix it.

He could see some hesitance on the part of the financial backers. But by the end of the meeting, none of them were able to stand up to Captain America and tell him that his teammates should get less attention than him.

Sometimes, being a historical icon had its perks.

Unfortunately, it also had a tendency to lead to people to underestimate his humanity.

"...your dog tags?"

Steve stared at the director. "What?"

The director smiled congenially.

"Your dog tags, Captain – they would make an invaluable addition. They are an excellent example of how the Army conducted its business, and say so much about a soldier in such a little space. I understand you don't need them today, as their regulations are so different."

> **Actually, I really, _really_ doubt that anyone with even a remote familiarity with military history would ask Steve for something so storied and personal as dog-tags. The sentimentality of dog tags are so deeply ingrained in America that I actually really struggled with this part of the story. Ultimately, I just handwaved it with that line about them ‘underestimating his humanity’ (dehumanization by deification).**

Steve swallowed, and said, "Let me get back to you on that."

The director seemed surprised, but nodded. The curators were all glaring at their boss where he couldn't see them. So was one of the backers, an old man whose eyeroll at the request made Steve wonder if he'd ever served in the military.

Steve never asked.

Instead, he told everyone he knew about the request.

Half of them said to give them over – to let his past go and move on with his life. The other half told him to keep them, to not let the museum take away one of the few pieces of his past he still had left.

> **The first line was also supposed to help handwave a historian asking a WWII vet for his dogtags. I don’t think it worked, sadly. :(**

Stiles asked, "What do you want to do?"

Steve stared at the counter where he was assembling the ingredients to make pad thai. He fiddled with the bluetooth earpiece in his ear, the actual phone itself sitting on the opposite counter behind Steve. "That's just it – I don't know."

"Okay," Stiles said. There was a clacking of keys in the background, which Stiles had insisted was homework and which Steve guessed was anything but. "So why do you keep them?"

> **Stiles is currently researching werewolves to try and help Scott.**

Steve swallowed, reaching into his shirt to pull out the dog tags in question. He had to wear regulation identifiers in the field, but otherwise he wore these all the time – 24/7, as the phrase was today.

"I've had these dog tags with me from the beginning," Steve said. "When I got them, it was a farce, but – I even had them in my pocket when I first stormed that HYDRA base to go rescue Bucky, you know? I'd forgotten about them. I was doing a show and sometimes little kids asked to see them so I got used to keeping them on me and-" He swallowed. "They've been with me through every battle, every mission, every moment, and even in the ice. I went down wearing these, and came back up wearing these."

"Right," Stiles said. "So, opposite question: what would you gain if you gave them away?"

> **Seriously, analytic capacity – that’s where Stiles is the BOSS.**

Steve sighed.

"...moving on," Steve said. "Closing that chapter of my life for good." He took a deep breath. "And – from a sentimental standpoint and an educational one, I can see the value of them having it."

"But aren't you already giving them your old uniform?" Stiles asked.

Steve huffed humorlessly. "True." He poked at the chicken he still had to slice for his latest cooking experiment. "But dog tags do mean a lot – both to how the army functions, and in what they meant to the people wearing them. Kids could learn a lot, and maybe some of their parents, too. Me and Bucky used to joke about our dog tags matching each other, you know? We'd both listed his Ma as our next of kin, and I'd lived with them before joining Project Rebirth, so apart from our names and blood types, they were exactly the same. We both even had left our religions off."

"How come?" Stiles asked.

"The USO kept mine off because it would've looked bad for an American icon to be Catholic," Steve said. "It's not such a big deal, today, but back then – well, people had opinions about Catholics. And a lot of Jews didn't say what their religions were on their dog tags, to protect themselves in case they were captured by Nazis."

> **Anti-Catholic sentiment was incredibly strong, back then. There was an attitude that all Catholics were more loyal to a ‘foreign leader’ (re: the Pope) than they were to the US. Al Smith, a Democratic presidential candidate in 1928, had a popular platform, but lost because he was Catholic, and the Americans at the time did not want a Catholic president. It was actually a really big milestonewhen John F. Kennedy became America’s first Catholic president (which likely would shock Steve as much as a black president). Even then, many people still thought that a Catholic president would lead to Pop/Vatican interference with American governance, and that a Catholic president would compromise the American separation of Church and state.**

"Steve," Stiles said. Steve realized the clacking of computer keys in the background had stopped. "Is trying to 'close that chapter of your life' really a good idea?"

"It's...not like I'm going back," Steve pointed out.

"Exactly," Stiles said. "I'm probably stretching this metaphor a bit too far, but even if I can only read something for the first time once, I can reread it as much as I want. I go back to old books all the time."

> **Stiles tends to get lost in his analogies.**

"You think I shouldn't?"

"I think that you shouldn't let go of your past because it's what you 'should' do or what everyone wants you to do," Stiles said. He paused, then said, "You know, most of the movies in the living room were my mom's?"

Steve shook his head, then remembered to say, "I didn't."

"Right," Stiles said. "Well, she was a big movie buff, especially sci-fi. Dad used to say she had the good movies and he had the good music." Steve laughed, and Stiles continued. "My mom is gone, now – but the stuff she loved is still here. It's a bit like having a little bit of her back every time I watch one of her movies." There was a pause.

"Stiles?"

"But sometimes," Stiles admitted. "It's a little too much. I still cry sometimes when I watch Star Wars because it – it was our thing, y'know? So I don't really watch it with other people-"

"You watched it with me," Steve cut in, confused.

> **Stiles makes the people he love watch the movies eventually. The only reason Scott is an exception is because Scott _makes_ himself an exception to tease Stiles (and because he’s just not a space opera fan and thus does not care much about Star Wars). I actually headcanon that Scott is a big Star _Trek_ fan, which is why he can’t really get into Star Wars. He doesn’t actively dislike it, it’s just that he’s interested in Star Trek because it’s more down to earth (social commentary, civil governance, morality, etc.), and the reasons he likes Star Trek are minimal or absent in Star Wars.**

"I did say sometimes," Stiles pointed out. "And I mean – if you'd lived, you basically would've been Mom's uncle, right?"

"I would like to think so," Steve said softly, giving up on the noodle experiment for now and reaching into the fridge for a soda.

"So, y'know, that was different. But most of the time, there is a really high likelihood of leaking from the face to happen, so I'm – cautious. But back to the point I was trying to make: I still have all of Mom's movies. I've seen them all before, but that doesn't mean I don't like to sometimes watch them again."

He paused again, then added, "And I can share them with other people."

"There aren't copies of my dog tags," Steve said dryly, then froze. "But that is an idea..."

"What?"

Steve swallowed. "Let them borrow my dog tags to make replicas."

> **And this is when Stiles opens a tab to look up museum replicas.**

"Huh." Silence, then the sound of a word being typed into Stiles' computer. "That could actually work. It's not like it matters whether it's actually the real thing or not, when no one is touching it or anything. It would stay behind glass, right?"

"Yeah," Steve said with a smile. "Thanks. I think I'll do that."

"Happy to help," Stiles said proudly. "And I think Mom would've been happy to help, too."

"I'm sure she would," Steve said. He had a thought, then laughed as he said, "And out of all the things for you two to inherit from Bucky, I'm somehow not surprised it's this."

"Bucky?" Stiles asked, surprised.

"He loved this stuff," Steve said. "Science fiction, speculative fiction, comics, everything. Last night before he shipped out to Europe, and out of everything there was to do in town, where did he take us? The World of Tomorrow fair." Steve smiled wryly at his fridge, cracking open the soda. "Hell, once he got over all the danger I put myself in for it, he even thought Project Rebirth was swell. He wouldn't admit it where anyone else could hear – especially Howard – but he did."

> **Seriously, Bucky and Steve were _both_ science and science fiction nerds.**

Stiles laughed. "Good to know I'm keeping the family tradition alive, then."

"You will be once you make Scott watch the Star Wars movie," Steve teased. Stiles groaned, and Steve laughed. "Hey, Stiles?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you," he said sincerely. "For listening to me whine about this."

"No problem," Stiles said. "Good luck with the Smithsonian. If those guys are anything like my history teacher, you'll need it."

> **I was going to try and make a call-forward joke towards Mr. Yukimura when he took over for the murdered history teacher in Season 3, but we don’t really see enough of him in the classroom for me to get enough material to make this joke. :(**

He didn't, in the end. While there were some disappointed looks, ultimately everyone acquiesced when Steve said it was a replica or nothing.

It was a good compromise, and it was mostly thanks to Stiles.

The sheer amount of help Steve got from Stiles made him tremendously grateful when he was able to return the favor.

It had been by accident. Stiles was bemoaning his decision to tackle an advanced English course that was meant for students a year older than him. He'd sent Steve a picture of his copy of King Lear, groaning about how dense and nonsensical it was and how "even Sparknotes isn't helping".

Smiling, Steve sent back a long text explaining it.

_King Lear plans to split his kingdom between 3 daughters, giving them land based on how much they love him. Two oldest ones are liars, giving him lots of bullshit about how much they adore him. Youngest one just says she loves him like a father, which is "not enough". King Lear banishes her and gives his kingdom to the other two. They later turn on him, while the youngest is there for him when he needs her. There's a war between Lear & his youngest vs the other two, and everyone is dead by the end while someone else ends up King._

> **I hated this book the least when I was in AP Lit. :P But in all seriousness, I put this here as a sort of reminder that the world is much older than seventy years, and a huge chunk of our contemporary culture comes from well before Steve’s time. At least half my high school literature curriculum was pre-WWII, so Steve would actually be tremendously helpful to Stiles – their relationship is not a one-way exchange of information.**

Then Steve put away his phone to go have his meeting with Fury about the latest snafu in Latveria. It devolved into Steve and the other tactical officers sitting there twiddling their thumbs as Fury and the Eastern Europe Chair went back and forth about Victor Von Doom's latest antics and their implications for global security. For the first time, Steve understood why people were so blasé about checking their phones during long, boring meetings. Steve could have pulled out his tablet and played Tony's favorite music and Fury wouldn't have noticed.

> **I’m a conlanger, and I was shocked to realize no one has made a language for Latveria. FFS we have one for the Dark Elves in Thor 2, but not for Latveria. So I’mma make one, myself. ^_^**

But he didn't. Instead, Steve checked his phone under the table to see Stiles' text. _OMG THANK YOU. Makes more sense, now. Well, as much sense as Shakespeare ever makes._

_No problem,_ Steve texted back. Then, remembering Stiles' earlier message, he added, _What's Sparknotes?_

Stiles send Steve a link, that turned out to be some kind of summary of King Lear. Except no, not just a summary – there were also analyses of the chapters, notes on symbolism, the meanings...

Intrigued, Steve explored. It didn't take him long to find notes for most of the books people had recommended to him and Steve hadn't ever felt the desire to read.

For the next few weeks, Steve always went through this website in his dead time. Waiting in line, commuting, and yet more meetings where he was more prop than participant. He "read" nearly three dozen books in less than a month, all the stuff that had become common reading in Steve's time in the ice and that he had missed. A few of them even sounded good enough for him to go, get, and read the actual books.

> **Sparknotes would be revolutionary for Steve. The reality is most ‘classics’ or culturally relevant novels that people have read or otherwise know about were not read for personal interest, but as an assigned reading sometime in their education. Steve is not a student and does not have time to read incessantly, especially shit he does not actually want to read (I was only personally interested in like a tenth of the stuff I was assigned to read in school, and I’m a particularly voracious reader who was reading at college-level by 5th grade). Sparknotes and other ‘study guide’ sites would be a valuable way for him to catch up on the cultural background of modern Americans as necessary or relevant to him, without draining so much of his time on books he probably has no personal desire to read and no external mandate (re: assignment) to read.**

Then he'd started poking around the other sections, learning more new math and science in a few days online than in weeks of SHIELD briefings.

It compounded when Stiles, upon hearing this, pointed Steve towards other websites, YouTube channels, and even a few books that were far more helpful than the textbooks and learning programs SHIELD had gotten him. Steve had never felt more lied to and educated than when he finished _A People's History of the United States_. He learned more about the Bible from an _Don't Know Much About_ book than years of church. The combined sadness and exasperation of that fact was subsumed by all the hours he lost exploring Khan Academy. Medieval POC almost made him want to go back to art school. Then he remembered why this blog existed in the first place, and felt almost glad he'd never finished.

> **A People’s History of the United States is a revolutionary history book that tells American history from minority perspectives. ~~Looking at you, History Channel.~~ You can read it online for free [here](http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html), and then go learn more at the [Zinned Project](http://zinnedproject.org/teaching-materials/), an interactive website full of tons of teaching tools for this book and this overall perspective on American history. Registration is free if you want the PDFs. :)**

> **One caveat: this book, project, and movement is often criticized for being an extremely slanted telling of history, limited and scope, and reliant on biased or questionable sources. The thing is, this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive, one-stop source of American history. It exists specifically to counteract the dominant narrative of American history. If you are in any way interested in a more comprehensive text on American history (that is still inclusive of minority perspectives), I recommend Eric Foner’s[Give Me Liberty](http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/give-me-liberty3-brief/) textbook. (If you want it but can’t get it for whatever reason, hit me up in the comments.)**

> **[Don’t Know Much About the Bible](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57795.Don_t_Know_Much_About_the_Bible) is a wonderful historical study of the Bible as historical literature – meaning it’s not just religious indoctrination or spiritual study, but lots of really valuable history and literary analysis. For those of you still in high school, just starting college, or interested in an introduction to a new subject, [Khan Academy](https://www.khanacademy.org/) is your friend.**

> **[Medieval POC](http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/) is an art blog that aims to showcase art with people of color and counteract the narrative that there were no white people in European history or they were only ever slaves. This blog gets embroiled in a lot of controversy, and that’s mostly a result of the disconnect between the blog’s target audience and its actual audience. This blog is generally aimed at Americans and meant to counteract an American-derived narrative of European history. However, there is a tremendous number of European followers who don’t always remember or realize this (or simply don’t know how European history is taught in America), leading to [conflicts](http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/74180353149/re-medievalpoc-it-really-annoys-me-that-there-are) about the definition race, history of racial categorization, and how race functioned in medieval/pre-modern Europe. Most of the conflict surrounding this blog tends to fall to the wayside if you remember/understand that everything is parsed through an American lens, for an American audience, in order to counteract a misinformed American narrative. For other conflicts besides that particular one, the blogger has [generally been receptive](http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/81678727003/corpsazorsomething-hey-so-i-posted-this-qa) to discussion and correction.**

Somewhere in there, he ended up finding all sorts of drawing tutorials on his own. Soon, he found himself burning up a ridiculous amount of his salary on art supplies that would've made his old art teachers weep with joy.

> **Up until the late 1940’s, art supplies were very expensive and kind of hard to come by. Steve would’ve had better access than most when he was a little older, in either art school or through his work as a comic book illustrator, but it still would’ve been expensive for him, and thus not something he would utilize often for personal reasons.**

He'd spent a week using every new art technique he learned on a portrait of his best friend as Steve remembered him. Not as Captain America's sidekick, or even the war hero Sergeant Barnes, but as Bucky, the overprotective trouble-maker who took Steve under his wing and kept him there no matter how many times the world tried to tear them apart. Steve even made his own craft frame, and the portrait of Bucky in his old work clothes took pride of place in Steve's living room.

Steve sent Stiles a picture of it, and Stiles sent back a string of thumbs-up symbols.

Eventually, Steve filled his walls with other things, as well. His own memories of his mother (and a whole lotta nothing about his father), the Howling Commandos as they'd never been filmed, Howard when the cameras were gone, Peggy as the agent she was instead of the woman people wanted her to be...

> **From the Captain America comics:**  
>    
>    
> 

She'd chided him when Steve had given her a picture he'd drawn of her shooting at him. The bottom quarter of the page was taken up by the inside of the shield as the rest of it showed Peggy lowering her gun, eyes fierce and form perfect.

> **Steve and Howard’s faces in that moment were practically the embodiment of ‘mark me down as scared and horny’. :P**

"Did I ever apologize for that?" Peggy asked him softly, tracing the edge of her hair in the drawing.

"No need," Steve said. "I completely deserved it. I should never have said that about you and Howard."

Peggy smiled, reaching over to grab Steve's hand in her own.

"It's a shame we never got some fondue, ourselves."

"I hear they sell kits, these days," Steve said, wrapping his large hands around her withered ones. "If I can sneak it past your nurses, we can have some in here."

> **There are a lot of homemade chocolate fondue and cheese fondue kits, these days.**

Peggy scoffed. "Better to just break me out of here. I still haven't seen your apartment, you know."

"I can hook up a, uh, webcam? Give you a video tour?"

" _Virtual_ tour, Steve, virtual tour..." Peggy shook her head. "No. I want to see it in person."

She didn't even look like she could make it to the restroom on her own, let alone survive a jailbreak, but Steve nodded along anyway.

Probably the most valuable thing Steve learned from Stiles, though, was how to find things himself. A simple tutorial on how to use Boolean logic in Google searches led to various pages on how most people actually used search engines, how websites structured their own "discoverability" to that, and what SEO even meant.

> **While I’m here: please don’t ever tell someone to just “look things up themselves” if they are confused about something and ask you for your help. Google is a powerful search engine that delivers results via several mechanisms/algorithms – meaning that two people could search for exactly the same thing at exactly the same time and still get very different results. Mostly, one’s location, one’s own past search history, and the searches of other people looking up this same term, are the biggest influences on search results. What _you_ see when Googling something may not be what _they_ see.**

While a little ridiculous, Steve felt incredibly accomplished once he realized the best way to figure out that song Clint kept singing was to just look up a few of the lyrics. Steve ended up learning more music history just from the background of American Pie than the books Tony had recommended.

The next time Clint started singing along to the song when it came up on the radio, Steve chimed in on the chorus. Clint's grin could've blinded the whole jet. Despite still being covered in mud and blood from their mission, eyes dark with nearly three days of sleep loss, Steve had never seen Clint so happy since the day Phil Coulson died.

> Thanks to his new search skills, Steve also stumbled across gay history.

He'd just been trying to get an inkling of what might've happened to some old friends of his, clubs he'd gone to back in his day. He'd ended up drawn into page after page of history and politics and new understanding. Stiles called it a "wiki walk" or "research wormhole".

From the days of Dorothy to Stonewall to the AIDS crisis, and all the political debates today from "coming out" to conversion therapy, he read about it all. He kept abreast of the gay marriage movement, the occasional person of Steve's interest either coming out, or having come out ages ago and no longer being remarkable for it.

> **I legit just imagine Steve avidly going through the[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_the_United_States) articles on the subject.**

Yet somehow, none of it really hammered into Steve how lackadaisical about homosexuality the 21st century could be. Instead, that understanding came due to a text from Stiles.

_Achilles and Patrocalus were totes gay for each other, no wonder everyone thinks me and Scott are dating._

> **For those of you not familiar with Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek warrior who had been given super-human strength and nearly invulnerability, whose most famous military acts were a revenge spree after his ‘best friend’/lover Patrocalus was killed in battle while bearing his image (wearing his armor), and whose most famous personal item was a shield covered in iconography that represented Greek values he was upholding in battle.**

It was hard to forget how casual Scott and Stiles had been about admitting that Stiles' personal fantasy figure was a man. Biting his lip in the privacy of his own apartment, Steve tested the waters by texting back, _Well, at least you two would make a cute couple._

_WE WOULD BE THE CUTEST. But Scott is basically my brother, so also the grossest._

> **Me lampshading, then dismissing, all the Sciles undertones in this story. :P**

Steve grinned and tried not to cry as he wondered if everyone today would have assumed he and Bucky were dating, the way they acted together.

They wouldn't have been right...but they wouldn't have been wrong, either. Facebook even had an option for this, though Steve wasn't sure how the terminology worked. Were you in an "it's complicated" with someone, or were you someone's "it's complicated"?

> **The correct term isIn a Complicated Relationship With….**

Even in its simplicity, Steve's relationship with Bucky had been the most complicated in his life.

But both Bucky and the man Steve used to be were dead, so now it was also the most irrelevant.

He tried not to think about it. He tried not to wonder if he and Bucky could've been a force for good after the Stonewall Riots. Or if they could've been one of those old couples on the news who'd been together for decades and only just got married when it was legalized. Would they have just gone to a courthouse or held a full wedding?

Steve thought of those videos of Claudia's ceremony. Would she have gone to her Uncle Bucky's wedding? Maybe she would've been a flower-girl if she were young, or a bridesmaid if she were older.

He wondered what song he and Bucky would've danced to, and lost the evening to his own grief again.

> **Probably also something Frank Sinatra-ish.**

But unlike before, it was only the evening. He had a nightmare that night, but was able to spend some time drawing and reminiscing. Eventually, he was able to get back to sleep, and the next morning woke up to lots of turkey.

Both in the figurative sense of Thanksgiving fervor having taken over the radio, television, and newsfeed seemingly overnight, as well as a literal sense, in the form of a mission in Ankara, Turkey.

> **Fun fact:[the bird gets its name from the country](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97541602), not the other way around or just a coincidence. Specifically, when European settlers first encountered the bird, they thought it was a new species of a family of birds called guineafowl, which are seen as originating from Turkey. As such, the birds were called "turkey fowl", which then just got shortened to "turkey".**

The briefing officer looked ready to eat his own tablet due to all the terrible puns people kept making for the entire meeting. Some of them were even funny.

The humor went away as soon as the new STRIKE team sergeant asked him if he had any plans for Thanksgiving.

"...I don't really have any family to make plans with," Steve pointed out.

Agent Rumlow blinked in surprise, then said, "Well hey, plenty of loners in SHIELD. Training division throws a party every Thanksgiving for everyone who can't or doesn't want to go home." He leaned into Steve conspiratorially. "If you go, find the research division's table. They spike their punch with something most of us are pretty sure isn't even legal in most countries."

> **They’re trying to inventSynthehol. :P**

Steve smiled. Seventy years and the best secret was still who had the best booze. "I'll keep that in mind."

That was going to be the end of that, right up until Fury had asked off-handedly if Steve was going to be busy that week, and ended up surprised that Steve was planning on going to the party.

"What else would I do?" Steve had asked in the face of Fury's confusion.

"I thought you would've seen that kid you're texting all the time," Fury said.

Steve pursed his lips. "Thanksgiving is a family event, sir, and I – I don't know them that well."

"So?" Fury asked. "You've talked more with that kid in the last few months than I have with my mother in the last few years, I still see her when I can on the holidays."

"...how do you know how much I'm talking to him?" Steve asked, narrowing his eyes at his superior officer.

> **The beginning of Steve’s disillusionment with SHIELD.**

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Fury asked. Then he shook his head wryly. "Just call the kid, Cap, invite them over to your place for Thanksgiving dinner. It would do you some good."

"I'm not going to intrude on a family I don't have!" Steve snapped.

Fury raised an eyebrow over the eyepatch, and pointedly turned their attention back to the latest reports on the Ten Rings.

For almost a week, Steve tried to put the suggestion out of his mind. The problem was that the more you tried not to think about something, the more you ended up thinking about it.

Thinking about the difference between a work party and a family dinner. Thinking about how his last two Thanksgivings had been in Europe seventy years ago, surrounded by people who didn't really celebrate it but were always happy to throw a party at even the flimsiest of excuses. Thinking about the mystery poultry they'd roasted over low fires, sharing with the French resistance fighters who'd decided that America was onto something with a holiday dedicated to stuffing themselves silly.

> **Military Thanksgivings in WWII were actually a really big deal. Because soldiers mostly subsisted on rations, a tremendous amount of effort was put in to make sure proper Thanksgiving meals were available even for infantry and marines (who tended to get the worst food). Visiting or passing Europeans often described it as ‘Christmas come early’, for whom Thanksgiving was a real treat since the holiday wasn’t a part of their culture. The exuberance over Thanksgiving food/dinners in rations environments (both overseas and at the homefront) contributed to the emphasis on Thanksgiving dinners in the holiday today.**

Finally, Steve called Stiles and asked him what he usually did for Thanksgiving dinner.

"Lunch," Stiles deadpanned.

"...huh?"

Stiles laughed. "Unfortunately, crime and medical problems don't really stop for the holidays. There always needs to be at least a few cops on duty and a few nurses on call. So me, Dad, Melissa, and Scott make a sort of Thanksgiving lunch, then me and Scott take the leftovers to our parents for dinner at the hospital and the Sheriff's station. Me and Scott never minded, and this means one more cop and one more nurse that can go home to their families. Why? Wanna come?"

> **I wanted to have them doing something unique for Thanksgiving, not just dinner, and since both Melissa and the Sheriff are different types of first-responders/emergency workers, this seemed like a good way to go about it. I honestly think that Melissa and the Sheriff both would lose a lot of their enthusiasm over the traditional dinner after losing their spouse, and as such both would honestly not mind working that night, with their only concern being their sons. Hence the new tradition of lunch – all the great food, tradition, and family feels, without the bad memories or feeling of someone being missing to drag them down.**

Steve clutched the phone and stared at his bedroom ceiling at the flippant invitation.

"...I don't want to intrude," he said. He didn't want to face a family that wasn't his...but it's not like the four of them were a family, either, at least in anything other than choice. Then again, that was sometimes the most powerful kind of family of all.

Steve still remembered the day some young rabbi-in-training had nearly gotten his head beaten in by a pack of little old ladies when he'd tried to kick Steve out of a Passover Seder because he wasn't officially the Barnes' family. The actual rabbi had welcomed Steve without a second thought, and with far more grace than the Father at Steve's church had accepted Bucky when he tagged along with Steve and Ma on Christmas.

> **While today, people inviting friends over to each other’s religious holidays and ceremonies happens all the time (at least in big cities and other diverse environments), back then it would’ve been incredibly rare, and in some cases even taboo. The Catholic Church still had a lot of codified anti-Semitism, and Jewish communities were often much more reclusive back then. However, that’s doctrine – reality has always seen people crossing barriers and making new friends all the time, and I can easily imagine some rabbis bowing down to a bunch of bubbehs who want to try and fatten up James’ sickly friend. :P**

"Dude, no worries, Melissa probably won't mind, Scott would dig it, and..." There was some noise, some footsteps in the distance, then the phone being muffled as Stiles shouted (presumably down the stairs), "Hey Dad? Can Steve come over for Thanksgiving?"

Steve couldn't hear the Sheriff's response, but then Stiles said, "See? Dad says you can come!"

Steve swallowed, and tried not to let the stinging in his eyes spill down his cheeks.

The next day, Fury looked smug when Steve told him he was taking leave during the Thanksgiving holidays.

He was going to need it to go to California.

> **PHEW. Now to get off the Internet until I can see Civil War.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently I'm seeing Civil War _tomorrow_ , not today. As sad as this delay is, it's probably a good thing, because now I can focus on my paper due tomorrow morning. And now when I watch the movie, I don't have to divide my attention for the rest of the night after it! :)


	10. 3.2 - Cranberry Angst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of yesterday, I am 23 years old.

Ten days and one successful mission later, Steve stood in the grocery store closest to the Stilinskis' home. He shook his head in amusement, staring at all the options for a simple gravy.

"That's American consumerism for you," Stiles said, comparing the two jars of gravy he was holding.

Steve snorted as he peered over the teenager's shoulder. Stiles wasn't just comparing the jars, but comparing the nutritional labels.

"What's the verdict?"

"Either salt overload or fat overload," Stiles said with a sigh.

"It's Thanksgiving," Steve said. "Let your dad live a little."

"I'm trying to make sure my dad lives a lot!" Stiles cried out, holding up the jars like they were personally attacking his father.

> **Stiles is of the opinion that holidays are no excuse for shirking on a diet – not because he’s militant about diets, but because he thinks dieting is a lifestyle change that everyone should get behind. As far as he’s concerned, deviating during holidays just reinforces the dichotomy of “bad food tastes good, good food tastes bad”, which makes maintaining a healthy lifestyle unnecessarily harder.**

"Stiles," Steve said, rolling his eyes. Instead of continuing, he just reached over and grabbed both jars, saying, "Pick one before I take them both."

Stiles pouted, but Steve stared him down. The boy relented, pointing towards one jar and putting the other one back on the shelf. Steve put Stiles' choice into the basket, then started heading down the aisle.

"One day of intense salt won't do as much damage as a day of intense fat," Stiles grumbled. He was still glaring down at the jar as he followed Steve.

> **I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to decide which one Stiles would pick. This actually even included a long rant explaining why (in short, easier to undo a day of intense salt than a day of intense fat, and the salt would have more flavor to keep his dad happy).**

They wove their way through the flood of last-minute grocery shoppers, Steve doing his best to remember to keep his head down. His hat should ensure that no one saw his face long enough to make the connection to Captain America as he and Stiles filled up on Thanksgiving staples.

> **One of the other reasons Steve loves Beacon Hills, so much. There is generally higher attention to/for Captain America on the East Coast, especially in D.C. and NYC since one was his hometown and the other is his current town. But no expects him California, which means almost no one ever recognizes him, and even on the off-chance they do, they dismiss it because “Why would Captain America even be here in the first place?”**

"Everyone has so much food," Steve commented, feeling slightly out of place as one of the only grocery shoppers with a basket instead of a cart. Even accounting for how much having grown up in the Great Depression skewed his perspective, it seemed like everyone had too much for one family.

> **Yeah, this actually isn’t just Steve. For a variety reasons (namely globalization, as well as corporatization of domestic agriculture), we have a TON more of cheaper food available these days. Economically speaking, food is actually the American secret weapon: nationally, we spend the least of our income on food, compared to most other nations, which gives us more money to spend on other things – which stimulates growth, which leads to all the other economic benefits of stimulated growth. /nerdery**

"All the best to stuff yourself oblivion with," Stiles drawled. "Part of the great American tradition of celebrating the beginning of the Native American genocide."

Steve honestly felt guilty for snorting at that.

> **I think he would actually be more surprised by this. These days, in more and more of the country, the cutesy story of Thanksgiving as a peaceful union between the first colonists and Native Americans is relegated to elementary school, with either middle school or high school (or college, in some more conservative states) teaching the true history of how why that cutesy story is bullshit and how much we fucked over the Native Americans. Unfortunately, that cutesy story was the educational norm in Steve’s day, so today’s attitude of Thanksgiving as “a product of tradition, not history’ would be relatively new to him.**

"Now we just need the cranberries," Stiles continued. "And some more seasoning for the turkey."

The turkey was already in the oven at the Stilinskis' house. Stiles and Steve were taking a half-hour between bastings to get all the things Stiles forgot yesterday, as well as grab some groceries for the next week or so that was expected to be busy for the police department.

Apparently, the first week of Christmas shopping was a Really Big Deal.

> **Oh, Steve, you have no idea.**

They picked up the seasoning, then had to swing by the last few turkeys on the way to the cranberries. Steve bust his gut laughing when Stiles picked up one of the bagged turkeys and started handling it like a doll, mock-karate-chopping Steve's arm with a wing and making ridiculous noises from all the wonderfully terrible kung-fu movies Nat and Clint liked to watch and make fun of. He took a picture of Stiles posing with the turkey - he was starting to get the appeal of taking pictures of everything. Then he directed Stiles towards the check-out before he could get distracted by trying to build a turkey army.

Steve should thank Fury for pushing him to come out here. He probably wouldn't, but he should.

Stiles spent the drive home poking at the fancy radio controls of Steve's car and quizzing Steve about what he did during his work-outs, planning on trying to get his dad back into shape. The way Stiles described Thanksgiving, one would believe the Sheriff was about to inject a barrel of salt and fat into his bloodstream. The more Stiles bemoaned his father's cholesterol levels, the more he reminded Steve of Bucky's mother-henning.

He wondered if Scott and John got as fed up with it as Steve had, and smiled to himself at the thought.

> **Yes, Steve, yes they do. They love him for as much as you do, too.**

When they got home, Steve did his assigned duty of re-basting the turkey. With all of Stiles' banging around in the kitchen, Steve was a bit surprised the Sheriff didn't come downstairs. He supposed the man was used to sleeping through his son's noise. Stiles texted Scott about the mashed potatos he was being entrusted with while his mother also slept, then started putting everything out for the gravy. According to him, the store-bought stuff was just a base for how the final product would be.

> **As someone who also reads and writes a lot of smut, “basting” will never NOT make me giggle like an immature preteen. And the Sheriff is very accustomed to sleeping through Stiles’ noise – he’d never get any sleep otherwise. Really, just about any parent quickly gets used to sleeping through an incredible amount of chaos – the only question is _when_ they’ll get used to it, if they weren’t already before the first kid arrived.**

"The store's stuff is bland as cardboard," Stiles said. Then he snorted and added, "But trust me, this is gonna be nothing. Once you have Mexican mashed potatos, you'll never go back to the normal kind."

> **There are a million ways to make this, but generally, Mexican mashed potatoes (or _papas con chile_ ) are basically made mixing really-finely-mashed potatoes with the ingredients you would use to make chile, minus the meat and beans. If you have a low spice tolerance, use sweet potatoes rather than regular potatoes.**

They spent a cheerful half hour making the gravy, re-seasoning the turkey, and and digging out some fancy plates from the top shelves of the cabinets, all while talking about their holiday experiences. They started at Thanksgiving, which lead to Steve telling his favorite wartime Christmas stories, which led to Stiles recounting some of his family's Hanukkah traditions - half of which were exactly the things Steve remembered the Barnes doing. That led to some fun stories about Steve being invited to their holiday celebrations. Stiles smiled as Steve told him about Bucky coming over to have Christmas dinner with Steve and his Ma. He grinned outright at Bucky walking them to the church for midnight mass when the streets weren't so safe for a woman and a sickly boy to be walking on their own.

That devolved into talking about birthdays - and led to Steve remembering how his leave request had gone down.

"I tried to stay until your birthday," Steve admitted to Stiles. "But there's an important mission I have to prepare for."

"No, it's fine," Stiles said. "Dude, your job has a lot of life-and-death situations in it, it's more important than my birthday."

> **Stiles actually means this, in both an incredibly mature and an incredibly sad way. His father has had to skimp out on or miss birthdays and other important days for work. He used to tell Stiles more details about those cases to try and make up for it, which had the side-effect of Stiles internalizing from a very early age that just because it’s his birthday doesn’t mean the world stops turning – people still die, and someone else still has to deal with it. He looks up to the heroes in his life, but having those heroes in his life comes with a cost, and this is it. (As this series progresses, John and Steve do not remain the _only_ heroes in his life.)**

"I wish it weren't," Steve said. "Or at least that the mission could be pushed back a few more days, but, well...there's some delicate timing involved. A terrorist group has been ramping up its activity and a lot of people are getting nervous about it."

> **My foreshadowing of the Mandarin/Ten Rings attacks from Iron Man 3.**

"Will you be okay?" Stiles asked. He looked up at Steve, and for a brief moment, Steve could read every ounce of fear in Stiles' eyes.

But Stiles was still a teenager, so he quickly caught himself, saying with forced nonchalance, "Because seriously, hearing that you got gunned down by a terrorist would be like the worst birthday ever." Steve wasn't sure whether to be grateful or heartbroken that Stiles wasn't particularly good at lying.

> **Both, Steve, both. You’re going to learn this the hard way once Season 3 of Teen Wolf rolls around.**

"Right now, it's just information gathering," Steve said, opening the oven to baste the turkey again. Picking up the turkey baster, he sucked up the seasoning and oil from the bottom of the tray and started dousing the meat with it. "Probably not even going to turn into a fight - it's just some rough terrain that they need the extra force for, that's all."

That and a request from Tony, who wanted to see just how many of his weapons the Ten Rings were hoarding but was banned from going, himself. In all honesty, Steve was most likely on this mission just to ensure Tony _wasn't_.

> **Steve really isn’t necessary for the mission, but he is one of the only people in SHIELD that Tony trusts enough to go on this mission in place of him, so Steve it is.**

"I won't say it's nothing, because we wouldn't be going if it were," Steve said, closing the oven door again and setting the baster on its plate. "But I think it's nothing to worry about. I'm just there as a safety precaution."

"If you say so," Stiles said, still worried, but accepting Steve's reassurances for now. He went back to fussing over the amount of cranberries he needed to put into the bowl, checking repeatedly between the bag of berries and something on his phone.

"I'll try to call," Steve said. "And you have to tell me where you go when you drive the jeep for the first time."

Silence. Silence, and Stiles paying way more attention to the cranberries than they actually needed.

> **Stiles really is a terrible liar.**

"...Stiles?"

The teenager mumbled something.

"What?"

"I said," Stiles said, sighing and setting down the bag of cranberries. "I'm not getting the jeep."

Steve stared, stunned. "What the- Why?"

Stiles pursed his lips.

"I'm short on the money," Stiles said. "By almost a third of what I need. My dad is already stretching himself thin for his part, but... I don't have enough, and even if I worked my hardest, I won't have enough by New Year's."

Stiles was still staring down at the cranberries, but now he wasn't even trying to actually make the sauce.

"Stiles-"

"It's fine," Stiles said. "It's like you said, there were a lot of other cars that cost a lot less, anyway. I can just get one of those, instead."

He could, but it wouldn't be Claudia's car, and Steve could see how much losing it was hurting Stiles in every tear the boy was refusing to shed.

> **Full disclosure: from when I was a toddler to when I was about 12 years old, my dad had the same minivan throughout all of it – through half a dozen homes, moves, a lot of interstate travel…the first decade of my life was a very tumultuous one, and his minivan was more of a constant for me than any of the homes I ever lived in. I broke down crying when it finally puttered out and had to be sold, in a way I never had for any of my homes. Losing that minivan was like losing my home, far more than moving out of any house or apartment had ever been.**

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"It's okay," Stiles said. "To be honest, it was kind of a long-shot, anyway. An' who knows, maybe if no one wants it, it'll buy me a few months' time and I can still get it."

It was clear Stiles didn't believe that, but he was trying to put on a strong face for Steve, and Steve knew all about faking it til you made it.

> **That is, unfortunately, a bit of a family motto.**

"Yeah," Steve supported. "Hell, one of the things that surprised me about the future was how everyone only wanted cars of a few colors, and that shade of blue really isn't one of them. I'm sure you'll get time."

Stiles smiled, scrubbing at his eyes.

"Yeah, I should get a less recognizable car," he said. "Something a little less easy for my dad and his deputies to spot around town."

> **Sometimes, I wonder if the producers of Teen Wolf had intended for that jeep to become the Teen Wolf icon that it has.**

"Why would you need to hide from them?"

"I have reasons," Stiles said, forcing a smirk.

His humor was half front, half genuine, so Steve merely shoulder-bumped Stiles - though with their current height difference, it was more like elbow-bumped. "What are you gonna be up to, huh?" he asked with a smile.

"That's for me to know and my dad to hopefully never find out," Stiles joked.

> **Oh, Stiles, if only you knew what’s in store for you. >:)**

He grinned at Steve, before turning his attention back to the counter.

Except possibly not all of it. Stiles was still looking at Steve when he bumped into the cranberry bag, which knocked into the sauce bowl, which then spilled all over Stiles, running down his hoodie and splattering across the floor.

It looked-

It looked like-

> **That awkward moment where I made an angsty and traumatizing moment out of delicious Thanksgiving fruit.**

Steve stared. At the rivulets of bright red and dark clumps of what he knew, he _knew_ were just fruit but which his eyes and memories insisted was burnt flesh.

Stiles didn't notice Steve's distress. On the contrary, Stiles grimaced at the mess, grumbling, "Great - my favorite hoodie. And now I look like I came out of a horror movie."

The worst kind of horror movie, if Steve were being honest.

The one that was no movie, but his own memories.

Stiles was saying something, but Steve didn't hear, too busy remembering all the times he saw real blood and guts splattered across real people. The old fisherman who'd joined the French resistance and took a machine gun to the chest less than a yard from Steve's side. The German soldier who'd taken a grenade to the chest and turned out to be a kid that died crying for his grandmother. The countless men and boys Steve watched shot to pieces and blasted apart. The times he had to slit someone's throat or break someone's neck to infiltrate a German base. The day Bucky and Dum Dum had been literally splattered with the pieces of a Russian soldier who may not have even been the enemy - they never found out for sure, and it didn't matter when the guy's brains were in Dum Dum's hat and Jim's hair and across Steve's shield.

> **Even Steve probably made some mistakes that cost people their lives in WWII.**

He could see Stiles' wide eyes as realization dawned. He ripped the hoodie from his body, but Steve didn't notice. He was too busy falling to the floor, scrambling back against something hard that felt an awful lot, in that moment, like the walls of the burnt out orphanage the Howling Commandos had hidden in when spying on a HYDRA battalion.

There had been over a dozen little bodies still inside the room, and it was one of the only times his team had disobeyed Steve to keep him from trying to tackle the entire HYDRA battalion on his own. After two weeks out in the field, with no ammunition and cutting their rations in half, Steve would've died. But in that moment he wouldn't have even cared, not when his boots were getting crusted with the dried blood of children.

> **This is why he tends to not be too torn up about those mistakes.**

For a moment, Steve could swear that there was a Nazi coming around the corner, ready to kill, ready to end someone's world or rip it in half or worse, and Steve reached for his sidearm.

He didn't find it.

Instead, Steve dug into his pocket and yanked out the little device that has been staving off insanity and keeping him grounded ever since Stiles gave it to him. Wrapping his fingers around the little chunk of medical plastic was already helping. It was nothing like anything he ever had back during the war, and more importantly, it wasn't a gun. Pulling off the cap, bringing it up to his mouth, the motions helped.

> **There are a slew of different variations based on personal background, current circumstances, and what is being treated (anxiety, PTSD, depression, etc.). But if any of you remember what I said a while back in this commentary about how simple, repetitive motions can be a good way of ‘jerking’ yourself out of a downward spiral? That’s what’s applying here, but on a more sensory level than a kinetic one.**

But what helped the most was the godawful taste that filled his mouth and snapped him back into the present faster than a broken rubber band.

> **Steve is relying on a sensory experience (taste) instead of kinetic experience (running), but the two actually work best together. i.e. if he has a nightmare, the taste will help pull him further away from the nightmare once he wakes up, and then running will keep him from spiraling downward once he has snapped out of the immediate crisis.**

He breathed and breathed and breathed in, until his lungs might've exploded from the amount of air in them, then let it all back out in a single stream. He recapped the inhaler as he breathed again, and pocketed it with his last meditative breath, before glancing up at Stiles.

"...what," the boy said - not even asking, just saying - while staring at Steve's pocket.

Steve smiled wanly, taking a moment to lean his head back against the cabinet.

"It...helps," he said.

"But it's empty!" Stiles cried out. "That's why I gave it to you in the first place."

Steve nodded, letting his head and eyes stray towards the mess of cranberries.

"I...just holding it helped me a little," Steve said. "It's so far away from anything I ever had before I died." He took a deep, bracing breath. "Sometimes in my flashbacks, I reach for a sidearm. Running into this instead was helpful, so I just started carrying it around with me everywhere. Then I asked Bruce about how inhalers work, poked around with some doctors in SHIELD, that sort of thing. I got the inhaler refilled without anyone knowing really about it."

> **This would actually be very difficult, but SHIELD + Bruce + Tony’s resource that Bruce has access to = handwaving.**

"But you don't have asthma anymore...?"

"I still have trouble breathing, sometimes," Steve said, looking away from the cranberry puddle to the toes of his socks. "Just - I remember. I remember being out of breath, not being able to breathe, all of that. And it's only a double dose of the strongest bronchodillator commercially available. It's already wearing off. Just - the taste of it, the moment of an extra deep breath, even the motion of pulling it out and using it in the first place. It...interrupts my flashback, I guess." He swallowed. "Granted, it may be in my head rather than the medicine actually affecting my lungs in any capacity. But I don't care if it is, it still helps."

> **Steve breathes in a redundant inhaler after he wakes up from a nightmare and then goes running. Which is why he runs half a marathon every morning and is so ripped by CA2. :P**

"Wow," Stiles said. "Now I'm really glad I gave it to you...or, did you get like a new one or something?"

"No," Steve said. "It's the same one you gave me..." He paused. "I know it might be a little presumptuous, but you...you're the closest thing to a family I have, right now. Having something you gave me helps, too."

"Dude, no, presume away," Stiles said, voice thick like he was speaking around a lump in his throat. "I mean, honestly, I was worried about you getting pissed off when I told you that I called you Uncle Steve when telling people about my summer so no one would find out you were Captain America."

Steve smiled. "I kind of like the sound of that, actually." He paused. "Honestly, if I hadn't gone down in the ice, there's a good chance your mother would've grown up calling me Uncle Steve, anyway, so...it fits."

> **And here we see the beginning of them calling each other by the kind of family they already are. :)**

"I've always wanted an uncle," Stiles mused, shifting his weight. At the edge of Steve's vision, Stiles' heel nearly brushed against the edge of the mess. "Or any kind of extended family, really. My other grandma died when Dad was little, and he hates his dad for some reason, and Mom's parents both died before I really remember them, and neither of my parents had any siblings, so..." Stiles shrugged. "Me and Scott were always a little isolated, I guess."

"Scott?" Steve asked in surprise.

"Yeah, um. His dad was never close to the rest of his family to begin with, and all connections were lost when Melissa kicked his dad out of the house. And then her own family are, well, kind of conservative. They got mad at her for leaving such a great husband and thought she should just suck it up and take his abusive behavior because that's what good wives do or something, so Melissa stopped talking to them, too."

> **I actually headcanon that this is why we never see even a mention of the characters’ extended families in canon.**

Steve swallowed, forcing his brain away from one memory lane and down another instead - one whose only saving grace was 'better than the war'. At least he had a little more emotional control over it. "People used to say the same kind of bullshit to my ma, too."

"...what?" Stiles asked. This time, he was asking, but he sounded like he already knew the answer.

"That's the way it was done, back then," Steve said. "Your husband comes home, you appease him, and it's your fault if you don't. Even if your husband is a drunken bastard who you only married because he knocked you up and isn't worth his weight in the bullshit he spouts on a daily basis." He laughed humorlessly in the bubble of Stiles' silence. "There's a reason why I draw so many pictures of my mom and my grandfather, but nothing about my dad."

> **Current comics canon is that Steve’s father was abusive, but his mother stood up to him whenever he smacked her around, which was how Steve learned strength. Today, that might seem a little counter-intuitive to us, but back in his youth, his mother leaving his father would’ve been nearly impossible. Socially speaking, it wouldn’t have been acceptable unless he was actively torturing her or trying to kill her (and sometimes not even then), and even if it were, that doesn’t mean there was going to be a lot of help for single mothers. Sarah did the most she could in her circumstances, and as far as Steve is concerned, no one has been as strong as she was (but Peggy came closest).**

"I...I'm sorry," Stiles said.

"Don't be," Steve said, frowning as a drip of water came out of no where to land in the tiny puddle of red sauce by Stiles' heel.

He looked up, tracing the trajectory of the drop, to see an ice-cube tray dangling from Stiles' limp fingers, a tiny rivulet of water inching down the side. He blinked at the tray, then raised an eyebrow at Stiles.

Stiles sheepishly put the tray back into the freezer. He paused for a moment in front of it after he closed the door, then looked over his shoulder at Steve.

> **This is how Stiles uses a sensory shock to get himself out of downward spirals. Where Steve uses taste, Stiles uses touch – specifically, the feel of the sudden cold of the ice-cube.**

"It's what I use for panic attacks," Stiles explained.

...Stiles had panic attacks?

Looking at the boy's face, Steve thought his heart might have shriveled up and sunk into his stomach.

"Why ice-cubes?" he asked, pushing himself up off the floor.

"The shock of the cold helps me snap out of it," Stiles said. "And if you use it on your face afterwards, you don't look so splotchy, so no one can tell you were crying. It's a two-for-one deal: stop the panic attacks, then hide them."

> **If you’re still a little splotchy as someone is approaching, wait until the people you’re hiding it from are in ear shot and sneeze a few times as an alibi/excuse. (On a completely unrelated note, the Sheriff thinks Stiles has really bad allergies. He does not, or at least they aren’t as bad as the Sheriff thinks they are.)**

Stiles carefully didn't look at Steve as he went to grab some paper towels and start cleaning up the cranberry sauce.

"...hide them?" Steve asked. He had a bad feeling that he knew where this was going.

Stiles nodded, still keeping his gaze on the mess. "If you rub it on the part of your nose between your eyes, you sound less stuffed up. Your eyes - less red and puffy. If it's small enough to swallow or you can bite part of it off, it makes your throat hurt less and you can talk normally a lot faster than without it. Or drinking cold water, that also does the trick."

> **This is legit, by the way. I generally recommend that you don’t, but if you ever feel the need to hide that you were crying, splash some cold water over your eyelids and under your eyes. Do _not_ splash any on your nose, though, that’ll make it worse. Drink some of the cold water or suck on the ice to soothe your throat and reduce the swelling.**

He'd put a lot of thought into this - and it sounded like he had a lot of experience with this, too.

"Stiles," Steve asked, drawing out the name. "Who knows about your panic attacks?"

Stiles shrugged, leaning back on his heels and clutching cranberry-soaked paper towels in shaking hands. "Me. You."

Steve stared, heartbroken. "What about your dad?" A headshake. "Scott?" Another headshake. " _Anyone?_ "

> **Stiles will only ever reveal his own vulnerability after someone else has revealed their first.**

Stiles glared up at him. "Who knows about yours?"

Goddamnit.

"No one," Steve admitted. "But just because I hide mine doesn't mean you should hide yours."

Stiles snorted. "The military has the highest concentration of PTSD out of every profession in the world. You go to work every day surrounded by people who have the same mental problems you do, and you want to call _me_ out on not saying anything?"

He glared up at Steve with genuine anger.

> **Stiles has no idea how strong the stigma against mental illness and PTSD can run in the military.**

With a deep breath, Steve said, "Yes, because you are a kid, and I'm-"

"So grown up?" Stiles said. "I mean, take out all the time in the ice, and you're like a decade older than me."

Technically over twelve years, making him nearly twice Stiles' age. But that wasn't Stiles' point, and Steve knew it.

> **Let’s assume Steve was born in July of 1917. ~~(I actually hate his birthday being on Independence Day, and I headcanon it’s just _close_ to July 4 and Steve and/or Sarah claim July 4 as his birthday for ~reasons~, but I digress).~~ The first Captain America movie implies that he went down in the ice not too long before VE Day, which was the beginning of May in 1945 – meaning well before July. I tend to assume either December of 1944 or January of 1945, as I like to think Steve’s death had an impact on the Yalta Conference. Anyway, this means Steve was 26 when he ‘died’. He came back/was found a few months before the Chitauri Invasion – I like to think January, also, mostly for convenience sake, so he was still 26. Then his 27th birthday came around (which he refused to celebrate since he didn’t really want to think about his age, all his lost friends and family, etc. – this is why he was in the Grand Canyon at the time). So now, as of this Thanksgiving scene, he’s 27, while Stiles is 15, making Steve “12 years older” – though in reality, since Stiles is about to turn 16, it’s just “well over 11 years older”, so Stiles is actually not far off when he says Steve is “like a decade older”. Also, I clearly have ~~so many other things I should be doing but I’m not~~ way too much time on my hands if I did this much math over a throwaway line.**

Stiles didn't keep staring at Steve, instead turning his attention back to the mess he was cleaning up. Both of them were silent as Stiles finished wiping everything down, and Steve took the paper-towels and wipes from Stiles to throw them away.

Stiles finished disinfecting half the kitchen, then reassembled the ingredients for the cranberry sauce. Before he could start making it again, though, he stopped, just staring at the counter. Then he turned to look at Steve, crossing his arms defensively.

"Look," Stiles said. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. But my dad worries about too many things as it is and Scott has his own problems and I - I can handle it. If I couldn't, someone else would've found out by now. I've spent over half a decade taking care of it without worrying anyone else. I think after all this time and effort, I have a right to keep this to myself. And I'm not sure why _you_ aren't telling anyone, but I can take a few guesses and I'm not about to force you to do something I wouldn't, either. So how about we both agree not to say anything to anyone else?"

> **This is a very skewed version of my own experiences with mental illness, trauma, coping, etc. ‘Telling’ is very necessary and very admirable, but it’s not something I see happen a lot. Most of the time, I’ve seen people who are more likely to help keep each other’s secrets – mental illness, trauma, and unhealthy coping mechanisms alike – rather than tattle, and often this is in large part because they don’t want someone else revealing their own.**

The way Stiles could swing from rampant childishness to shocking maturity never failed to give Steve mental whiplash. Half the time, Stiles sounded like he needed to go back to preschool, and the other half, he sounded like he could fit right in with the kind of people Steve worked with on a daily basis, both before and after the ice.

Steve wasn't sure if that said more about how mature Stiles was in his own right, or how young Steve was.

Maybe both.

> **It’s both. Steve is very young and very old at the same time – both in the literal sense, as well as the philosophical/metaphorical sense. Stiles is entirely the philosophical/metaphorical sense. ~~Until the nogitusne’s through with him, anyway.~~**

"Stiles," Steve started, only for the boy to cut him off.

"I can't..." Stiles stopped, swallowed, then started again. "I have to take care of my dad and Scott and - it's easier, this way."

"Are you sure about that?" Steve said. He turned and started fiddling with the nearly-empty bag of cranberries. "Me and Bucky took care of each other in our own ways. I didn't always like it - I actually hated it, most of the time, the way Bucky worked himself to the bone to take care of me, his ma, and his sisters." He paused. "But we helped him, too. Sarah and Mrs. Barnes both worked. Your grandmother and Anna were too young to work but they always had dinner ready for everyone so they could rest when they came home. I helped when I could. My kind of work was bordering on white-collar work, so I couldn't work much, but when I did I often got paid more than any of them did, and gave them as much as I could. When people wanted to say nasty stuff to them because Mrs. Barnes came from Romania or because they were Jewish, I took the hits so they wouldn't have to - and they patched me up when I got home."

"So you're saying that I shouldn't do this on my own, but you should?" Stiles challenged.

> **This guy’s related to Bucky, Steve, you’re going to have to work a little harder on your arguments than that.**

Steve sighed.

"Fine," he said. "I promise not to rat you out to your dad or Scott or anyone else. But how about this - if one of us ever tells anyone, the other has to tell someone, too." He held out his hand. "Deal?"

Stiles stared warily between Steve's face and his hand, but after several moments, unfolded his arms and shook on it. "Deal."

> **Steve honestly made this deal expecting that he would have to be the one to tell someone, then get Stiles to tell someone, too. He was quite surprised when it turned out Stiles told someone, first.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meant to get this out yesterday, as I like to try and update things on my birthday, but real life...happened, as it is wont to do. Oh, well, you live and you learn. :)


	11. 3.3 - Uncomfortable Chairs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the next update of Frost Bite is still frustrating me, so here, have this for now.

The turkey was slightly undercooked, and the cornbread muffins a little singed, but all in all, Thanksgiving Lunch was a success.

Melissa McCall was a lovely lady, and from the sounds of it a damn good nurse. Steve must've spent the first half of the lunch chatting with her about differences and similarities in the profession between today and his day - at least as best as he understood them through his own mother, and his own experiences in and out of hospitals in his youth.

> **Steve and Scott are both minority, righteous, former-asthmatics who went from sickly to super-powered overnight, raised by single-mother nurses after escaping the shadow of abusive fathers and then thrust in charge of a group that does a lot of howling.**

They ate the main course at the table, but then ate dessert in the living room while watching WarGames. After, Steve, Melissa, and John chatted in the kitchen while filling having some coffee while the boys went upstairs to Stiles' room.

> **WarGames is the movie Nat quotes when she and Steve are in Zola’s computer room/hub in Captain America 2.**

Melissa and John eventually went off for their shifts at work, while Steve 'kept the boys out of trouble' by watching all but the first of the Indiana Jones movies with them.

He still didn't get why Tony insisted the fourth one didn't exist.

> **Because it sucks, that’s why.**

They put the first one on after, and ended up dozing off halfway through it. The loud DVD menu woke them up. One look at the time had the boys scrambling to put together 'lunch' break dinners for their parents.

"No wonder you made such big portions," Steve said, watching the boys assemble Tupperwear meals for dinner and refridgerate the rest. He'd known it from the beginning - Stiles had also spent this morning getting ingredients for his 'leftover soup' - but it was still amusing to see it in progress.

> **Apparently, it’s actually spelled “refrigerate”, which spellcheck is only telling me _now_.  >.**

It was a quick drive to the station, where it turned out John wasn't the only cop whose family joined them there for Thanksgiving. A much older cop had someone who Steve assumed to be his wife, and a younger officer was eating with a preteen-looking girl who Steve figured was her sister.

> **That’s Deputy Valerie Clark and her little sister, Hayden Romero, who is still in middle school and around 13 years old. Two years from now, she and her sister are going to be so deep in medical debt that she’ll be illegally working as an underage waitress in a nightclub to pay for medication Hayden needs to _live_! Isn’t the American healthcare system so wonderful? :D /sarcasm**

The Sheriff grinned when they walked into his office, bearing tupperwear full of Thanksgiving leftovers.

"Just in time, Johnson and Gable came back from their Thanksgiving lunch breaks," he said. He cleared out paperwork from his desk in a meticulous system. Stiles set down the boxes and fished out a bunch of wrapped utensils from the pocket of his hoodie.

The turkey was still undercooked, the cornbread was still singed, and the chairs were uncomfortable to sit in for too long, but Steve had one of the best dinners since waking up from the ice. He stuffed himself silly as he listened to the Sheriff recount the funniest stories from Thanksgivings past.

> **I kept repeating the details of how the dinner was actually crappy (undercooked chicken, singed cornbread, uncomfortable chairs) so emphasize that the quality of the experience itself is not why Steve loves it, but because of who he’s with.**

"...and by the end, the poor kid tried to claim he wasn't stealing the turkey, but that the turkey was the designated driver!" John said. The Sheriff smirked as Steve and Stiles' laughter filled his office.

"How drunk was he?" Steve asked incredulously.

"We still aren't sure how he was conscious after we made him take a breathalyzer test," John said. "Let's leave it at that."

"Did you arrest him?" Stiles asked between laughs.

John shook his head. "Nah. I didn't need to deal with any quotas at the time, and his father's a friend of mine - my old partner, actually, before he got paralyzed on the job. The kid had gotten into a motorcycle crash trying to get to a hospital the day his father was shot, and they've had a rough few years. Arresting or fining him wasn't going to do anyone any good."

> **This is why the Sheriff was so lenient on the kid he knows has a temper and has committed multiple B &E’s (Breaking and Entering).**

"Sounds like a tough family," Steve said. "Able to go through all that and still try to celebrate Thanksgiving."

"They _did_ celebrate it, actually," Stiles said, having apparently already heard this story. "Dad made Donovan give the turkey back, bought another one, and then drove him back home. His dad dragged him around by the ear from his wheelchair for that stunt."

"It was the least I owed them," John said. "Besides, the kid was just trying to make up for burning their first turkey."

"Sounds like a good kid," Steve said, before tackling a particularly big bite of his turkey.

> **He was, until Theo got ahold of him and manipulated him into attempting to murder the Sheriff’s son and Stiles ended up having to kill him in self-defense! /false cheer**

"He is, though he has a bit of a temper," John said with a shrug. "I'm sure he'll get in under control eventually."

"Hopefully _before_ he starts police training," Stiles drawled.

"He wants to take after his father?" Steve asked, heart warming at the story. Or maybe that was just heartburn, who knew. Stiles hadn't been kidding about those Mexican mashed potatos.

> **…and that last word is spelled “potatoes”, which I actually know off the top of my head and somehow still missed. *headdesk***

"Yup," John said, sounding proud of the idea. "And until then, he's doing his best to take care of his dad. Not always succeeding, exactly, but he has his heart in the right place. I try to cut him some slack - he's doing his best, and family's important."

"I know," Steve said softly. "Even my legal department's been harassing me about it."

> **It would actually be HR (Human Resources), not Legal, that pesters him about this. Whoops.**

"How come?" Stiles asked around a mouthful of cornbread. John facepalmed at his son's temporary abandonment of table manners.

"Pension and power of attorney," Steve said with a shrug. "Which is stupid, because if I don't have an beneficiaries then SHIELD keeps the money. It saves someone the trouble of trying to plan my funeral if it's a state function, anyway. And it's not like power of attorney matters when SHIELD can override medical decisions, anyway."

"Wait," John asked, bewildered. "They can do that?!"

Steve nodded, chasing a bit of stuffing around with his fork. "I'm - not exactly a normal human. I'm literally a walking, talking biological weapon. Parts of my physiology are technically state secrets, even if no one has been bothering to keep them classified in the last few decades. I haven't been unable to make medical decisions since waking up in this century in the first place, but if I were...I'm pretty sure someone at SHIELD would take over no matter what."

"But who would they have to override in the first place?" Stiles asked.

Steve shrugged. "That's just it - there isn't anyone. Most of the people at SHIELD are fine with that. It gives them more leeway, but a few people have been insistent about my lack of next of kin."

> **I actually made an error with the terminology, here, and in the rest of the fic up through Chapter 4 (and the first Snowflake). Next-of-kin is a very specific term that refers to family members in a hierarchical order of “closeness” to the principal (the person whose next of kin you’re trying to find) in the absence of legal indicators otherwise. Stiles might be called Steve’s family in layman’s terms, and the constant conflation in common parlance means many people may erroneously refer to Stiles as next-of-kin, but legally speaking, he is not Steve’s next-of-kin – Steve doesn’t _have_ any.**

"You really don't have anyone?" Stiles asked, looking heartbroken at that thought.

Steve smiled wanly. "Technically speaking, _you_ might be the closest thing I have - I named Bucky my next of kin way back in my day, so since you're his only living relative..."

> **Steve is one of those people who used it erroneously, I guess? :P**

Both Stilinskis stared at Steve, dumbfounded. He hastily added, "But don't worry, I doubt anyone will try to bother you about this."

John leaned back in his seat, and Stiles bit his lip, looked at his father, then looked back at Steve.

"What if I want them to?"

Steve frowned, not sure what Stiles meant. Judging by the look on his face, though, John did.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked.

Stiles swallowed, glancing sidelong at his father again before looking back at Steve.

> **And the Stilinski instinct to take care of the people around them strikes! In canon, they don’t actually “adopt” people as much as fandom has made them out to be. That said, they’re a really good example of what happens when a nurturing instinct meets an overly-analytical personality. They want the people they love taken care of, but aren’t necessarily into doing it, themselves. This ends up being the source of their “protective” natures – and they are, at their cores, more _protective_ of the people they love above all else (conversely, the McCalls are more _nurturing_ of the people they love).**

"You should have someone to make sure you're okay," Stiles said. "It sounds like SHIELD would only do what's good for them, not what's good for you."

> **Oh, Stiles, you have no idea.**

Steve stared, stunned, as he realized what Stiles was offering. "Stiles, you don't have to-"

"What if I want to?" Stiles challenged again. "I'm serious. I don't even care about the pension or benefits or anything." He paused. "Um, I don't know what Catholic funerals look like, though, so I'll probably ask Scott for help with that, even if he's the wrong kind of Catholic."

Steve snorted wetly at that, morbidly amused, while John looked deeply troubled - though whether it was at the thought of Steve dying, or Stiles trying to plan a funeral with Scott, Steve couldn't fathom.

"I'm pretty sure I still qualify for an Army funeral, anyway," Steve said. He took another gulp of soda, but it didn't wash the lump in his throat away. "I just need to make sure it's _only_ an Army funeral and nothing else fancy because I'm Captain America."

> **Steve’s already donated his body to medical science, something he agreed to when he first signed up for Project Rebirth. He’s not too hung up on this, figuring that people studying his body can do a lot for medical science and he’s perfectly fine with that. It’s his funeral, his history, and his legacy that he’ll leave behind _this_ time around – they are what worry him.**

"We can do that!" Stiles pointed out. "Look, even if SHIELD overrides medical decisions or whatever - at least they can't just treat you like a lab rat. They'd still have to explain themselves, right?"

Steve looked to John who - who looked like he was actually considering it.

"John?" he probed. He wasn't even sure what he was asking for.

The Sheriff took a deep breath. "We can't and won't force you into anything," he said, giving Stiles a pointed look. "But it sounds like you could use someone to look out for you. And we don't mind being that someone."

> **That deep breath was the Sheriff mentally comparing the benefit of protecting Steve this way against the cost of how much harder this will make it for him to protect Stiles. While Stiles was just thinking about how Steve needs someone to look after him, the Sheriff went in understanding full-well that he and Stiles may end up at risk by virtue of being Captain America’s legal family.**

Steve swallowed, and stared down at his plate, the food that was a little badly cooked and the best things he'd eaten in this new millennium.

He shouldn't. He'd dropped into their lives without warning and without asking and they'd been nothing but kind to him. They took him in and let him sleep in their home and eat their food and showered Steve with the kind of generosity and rough affection that he was now convinced was a part of the Barnes family DNA. Listening to them would only bring more hardship into their lives that they'd never asked for, that Steve had no right to inflict on them.

"Steve," Stiles pleaded. "Let us help you."

But they were asking now, weren't they?

> **And now that Stiles knows, if Steve turns him down now, he’ll just keep asking. Forever.**

_Don't be stupid, Steve,_ Bucky had said a thousand times - including all the times Steve had tried to refuse the Barnes' help, had tried to be less of a burden on them. They never obliged his martyrdom back then, and Steve rather doubted they would, now.

Finally, he looked up and nodded. "Thank you," he said quietly.

Stiles grinned, holding out a fist. Steve made one, too, bumping it.

And just like that, he had a family again.

> **Somewhere in the ether, Rebecca Barnes is smugly showing off to her ma and sisters just how much Stiles is carrying on the Barnes family tradition in this moment. Claudia is very proud. Bucky would be, if he were actually dead. Also, wow, I’m really on a roll with the dark humor, today.**


	12. 3.4 - Black Friday

The day after Thanksgiving, Steve wanted to see what all the fuss about Black Friday was.

> **Black Friday is proof of how little it takes to ‘create’ holidays and cultural institutions. But seriously, don’t go shopping on Black Friday – the sales deals are usually lies and you’ll get better deals by waiting a week, anyway.**

"Your loss," Stiles said, shaking his head as he gave Steve directions to the mall.

"Are you giving me the long way around?" Steve asked, raising an eyebrow. "You seem to enjoy me driving you around a lot."

"I enjoy you driving me around in _this car_ a lot," Stiles said with a grin. "Seriously, where did you rent this?"

> **Stiles’ first and ultimate love may be Roscoe, but that doesn’t mean he won’t enjoy rides in other cars, too. :)**

"I didn't," Steve said with a shrug, making a turn where Stiles indicated. "I'm borrowing this car from a friend."

"You're borrowing a 1967 Shelby Cobra from a friend?" Stiles asked incredulously. "Steve, I looked this car up last night and - who the hell would lend this baby out?"

> **Stiles doesn’t actually obsess about cars enough to know this one on sight. Rather, he knew enough to know this was a really good car, and then went and looked up the features and details until he found the right one, at which point he went nuts realizing the car was as old as his parents and how expensive this car actually was. Even more than Jackson’s Porche!**

"Tony Stark," Steve drawled. "He has a dozen other cars, he can spare this one for a week."

Stiles gaped at him.

"When he heard I was going to be in California, he told me to swing by Malibu and take this one on a road trip," Steve explained. "Something about a long-distance road test to make sure it's still running okay. Not sure why 'this baby' would need that, but I wasn't going to pass up borrowing a car this nice for free."

> **This is the car Tony lands on and basically destroys when he’s first testing out the flight repulsors in his lab, in the process of building Iron Man. Dummy helped by spraying him and the car with the fire extinguisher. :)**

For some reason, that made Stiles burst out into laughter.

"Just when I forget your day job, you say you're borrowing Iron Man's car."

Steve grinned at the thought. "You forget that I'm Captain America?"

"Well, I mean - most of the time you're just 'Steve' to me," Stiles said. Steve saw him shrug in the corner of his eye. "I'm sorry-"

> **Originally, when Stiles’ POV was going to include this, he was momentarily worried that Steve was offended that Stiles would forget such an important part of who he is.**

"Don't be," Steve cut in. He swallowed. "I'm - I'm Captain America to everyone else, or Cap at best. It's nice to have someone who sees me as 'Steve first, Captain America second'."

> **There aren’t many people who see him as ‘Steve first, Cap second’ in the 21st century, so Steve is grateful for every one of them – and especially Stiles, given the Barnes connection.**

Stiles laughed as he pointed out the entrance to the parking lot of Beacon Hills' one mall. "Awesome! Because I meant to track a news alert on you but I never remember to check it. Now I won't feel bad."

Steve snorted and parked the car. With Stiles at his side, he walked into the mall.

Ten minutes later, he walked back out.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Steve said in bewilderment.

> **There’s a post out there explaining that the reason why Steve snaps “Language!” in Avengers 2 isn’t because he actually objects to foul language, but because he’s trying to cut down his own use of it. So this is me building up the foul mouth that this old army guy no doubt has. ^_^**

Stiles was unabashedly laughing at Steve. "That was five minutes longer than I thought you'd last!"

Steve scowled, and Stiles just doubled over in laughter.

After the worst of the giggles finally subsided, he said, "Wanna try again?"

Steve just shook his head. "C'mon, lets go back home."

Wait, no, not home - the house. Stiles' house. The Stilinskis' house.

Not Steve's.

> **Oh, Stevie baby, it’s too late for you. Brooklyn isn’t the hometown he remembers, so he’s already starting to latch onto a new town – the first one with people who felt like a family and who made him feel like he had a home.**

"Are you _suuure_?" Stiles said, grinning with that same ridiculous spark in his eye Bucky'd had right before Steve agreed to go on the Cyclone.

> **Stiles gets the same look in his eye whenever he talks Scott into a prank.**

"I'm sure," Steve said dryly.

"I dunno, man, I might need to check out some of them sales," Stiles started.

"Do you have your learner's permit on you?" Steve asked.

Stiles blinked in surprise. "Yes...?" he answered, patting the pocket with his wallet in it.

"We leave right now and you can drive the car home."

Steve had to jog to keep up with Stiles when he literally ran to the car.

> **Steve already knows Stiles so well.**


	13. 3.5 - Triangle Angst

"Scott's helping Deaton with some emergency, something about a cat with birth complications," Stiles said. He stared in bewilderment at the screen of his phone before shaking his head. "So he'll be here around three-ish."

> **Didn’t want this to be a sad or depressing reason for Scott having to stay away, but I _did_ want it to be some kind of emergency that would justify him working on a holiday. ~~Kitten~~ Childbirth waits for no one and knows no calendar! :P**

"Any plans until then?" Steve said, leaning against the back of the armchair, but not sitting down just yet. He'd spent nearly two hours sitting in the passenger seat as Stiles kept 'getting lost' and insisting Steve just had to see _this_ store and _that_ landmark on opposite sides of town.

> **Which is now why Stiles is so familiar with the town and all its shortcuts and weird little backroads, despite having only had Roscoe for a fairly short amount of time by the series premiere and being unlikely to have learned them from the Sheriff.**

Stiles looked down at his phone and bit his lip in thought. "Um, actually...there is something I need to talk to you about. Wasn't sure how to bring it up, though."

Steve knew that tone of voice and that posture. It'd been the same ones Stiles had when he'd given Steve the old inhaler.

> **His expression here is best understood as the one on Bucky’s face just after he rescued Steve from behind the movie theater, when telling Steve that he got his orders and would be shipping out, soon.**

Stiles led Steve upstairs to his bedroom, then knelt down to fish something out from under his bed.

There was a lot of things Steve might've expected, but the triangle of cloth that Stiles actually pulled out and held up to Steve wasn't it.

"A flag?" Steve asked, reaching out for the folded American flag. It was old, a bit faded, and Steve could smell the dust from two feet away. But it was still crisp, like it was freshly folded from a funeral.

Stiles nodded, standing up again without dropping it. "Bucky's funeral flag."

> **This was originally just a one-scene thing, but it ended up morphing into something so much bigger than I’d originally intended. It’s turning into a fantastic subplot that’s going to come back and bite a lot of people in the ass _hard_ once Bucky comes back.  >:)**

Steve's breath stalled in his lungs, hands frozen in midair. Stiles kept it held out as he started explaining.

"So, like, both your flag and Bucky's went to my grandma's mom - um, Bucky's mom. She died, the flags got passed around between my great-aunts for a while, then ended up with my grandma. She sold your flag to the National WWII Museum just before she died so Mom - my mom - wouldn't have to deal with her medical debts. And it even helped with the house or something?" He winced. "Sorry about that, I guess-"

> **While there are a slew of museums dedicated to WWII in one capacity or another, and many more generalized historical museums with sections catered to it, there is a single National WWII Museum – originally the D-Day Museum – in New Orleans. Rebecca was not particularly happy about selling the flag, but after half a century, it was worth a lot.**

"Don't be," Steve cut in. "I - this is..." He swallowed. "I'm glad I could still help her even after I was dead for more than half a century."

> **Steve doesn’t really care for his flag or any other memorializing of himself and his legend. He’s just glad that, in this indirect way, he was able to keep helping his family. His funeral flag not only spared Claudia the debts of her mother’s final illness and end-of-life care, but even helped the young Stilinski couple make the down-payment on their house.**

Stiles seemed to scrutinize him for a moment, before shaking his head and pushing on. "So, that's what happened to your flag. But she kept Bucky's - one of the last relics of her brother, I guess, or maybe just not enough money offered for it. She died, Mom got it, and then stuffed it up in the attic and forgot about it until I needed something to bring to show-and-tell in 4th grade. Then _she_ died, I got it, then I forgot about it until you had that problem with the dog tags."

> **That moment of scrutiny is Stiles pondering how Steve refers to himself as having _died_ , not just having been frozen. At this point, Stiles has already figured out that Steve basically has depression. While there’s nothing inherently bad about Steve’s word choice, here, Stiles worried that it was nothing good, either. Also, that show and tell was originally in middle school, but then Season 5 happened and Theo mentioned that the last time he’d seen them was 4th grade, so I bumped it down a few years. Because I’m nice like that. >:)**

Steve looked hesitantly at the boy, then reached out and took the flag in his hands. It felt like he would tear right through it if he didn't hold it delicately. He fell into Stiles' chair, setting the flag on his lap.

> **The reason why it feels so delicate to Steve is because of the material. Normally, flags were made of wool, but due to the sheer number of soldiers dying in WWII, the military switched from wool to cotton, and the tradition stuck. That is part of why there is such a strong tradition of not leaving flags out in ill weather – cotton flags are easily damaged.**

Steve heard Stiles fall onto his bed. "I got it because I figured - these flags are supposed to go to your closest family member, and that was kind of you. Or at least you know Bucky more than I do. So...do you want it?"

> **This is the earliest hint that Stiles’ relation to the Barnes family was only how he met Steve, but that he doesn’t really ‘feel’ like he’s Bucky’s family. He doesn’t feel a strong connection to Bucky – rather, his strongest familial relationship is to Steve, and he doesn’t really care about Bucky beyond however Steve feels about it. Stiles never really got to know the people who knew Bucky, and of course, never met Bucky, himself. ~~And by the time he _does_ , well…they’ll have bigger problems by then. >:)~~**

~~~~  


Steve looked up where Stiles was sitting on the edge of his bed, hands clasped between his knees as he leaned forward to look intently at Steve.

"Want it?" he asked dumbly.

> **I should’ve just said ‘echoed back’ or ‘repeated dumbly’, instead of ‘asked dumbly’. :|**

Stiles jerked his chin towards the flag. "The way I see it, that flag should be yours."

With a hard swallow, Steve said, "I...I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything," Stiles said with a shrug.

> **Due to all of Steve’s USO shows and his wartime speeches, everyone expects Steve to have a lot to say and always be ready to say it. What they don’t realize is that the reason why he always gives great speeches is because he actually gives them fairly rarely, and he plans them out ahead of time (if only in his head).**

Thank God. What _would_ he have said if Stiles had sat with that expectant look on his face everyone else got when Steve was speechless?

> **The fact that people expect him to always have something to say actually kind of weirds him out – sure, once he gets started on something he doesn’t really stop, but that just means he doesn’t get started much in the first place. He is actually pretty introverted, and hates how everyone expects him to be extroverted. ~~Not that I’m projecting or anything, no, not at all…~~**

~~~~  


Steve stared back down at the flag, and in edge of his vision, Stiles stood up.

"I'll, uh, let you...yeah. I'll be downstairs."

Stiles patted Steve's shoulder and went. Steve lost almost twenty minutes staring down at the flag, trying and failing not to imagine what Mrs. Barnes must've looked like when she got this flag, how she and the girls must've taken the news of the deaths, of Bucky's death.

> **Due to the nature of wartime bureaucracy, they actually got the news of the two deaths pretty closely together, which was as devastating as you would expect.**

Steve had promised to bring Bucky back to them, and instead he got him killed.

With a hard sigh, he finally shook himself out of his stupor and carried the flag downstairs, to his room. He set it on his pillow for now. Then he scrubbed at his face before he could start crying, and joined Stiles in the living room.

> **I suspect this went over most people’s heads, but there’s a reason why I specifically used the verb ‘carry’ here, despite the lack of weight or bulk typically associated with that term, instead of something more benign and size-appropriate like ‘took’. There is a specific way one is supposed hold, transport, or carry a folded flag during official ceremonies (one hand underneath holding it up, and another on top, like[this](http://www.unionleader.com/storyimage/UL/20110927/NEWS/709279953/AR/0/AR-709279953.jpg)). This is was Steve was semi-consciously doing when he took it from Stiles’ room down to his. It had the weight of emotion and history, and the gravitas of Steve’s unintended formality, which is why Steve was ‘carrying’ something as small and light as the flag.**

It was an enjoyable and relaxing day. He and Stiles watched a Star Trek movie, and once Scott came, the boys introduced him to video games, wiling away hours playing Mario Kart. Steve was horrible at it, but the boys sportingly let him win a few races anyway. His thumbs were a little sore by the time Mrs. McCall called Scott to come pick her up from work.

> **It’s a testament to how much they were playing that even _Steve’s_ thumbs were sore. :P**

Dinner with the Stilinskis was Thanksgiving leftover wraps, with some Turkey soup thrown in. They finished off the pumpkin pie for dessert. Steve knew he was somewhat subdued compared to yesterday, and that John noticed it. But either Stiles had talked to him or John just knew better, because he didn't say a word.

That night, Steve pulled Bucky's flag to his chest as he went to bed, and finally stopped holding back the tears.

> **Back when Stiles’ POV was going to go back this far, there was a scene of him glimpsing this from the hallway and thinking darkly, ‘Great, I made Captain America literally cry into a flag’.**


	14. 3.6 - Stiles is Very Californian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talking Cure is being very stubborn, so here, have some author commentary in the mean time.

The next day, Steve washed his face twice before facing the Stilinskis. Then he spent the morning helping Scott and Stiles improve their lacrosse throws over in the park.

> **He had to wash his face twice because of all the crying.**

If it were up to him, Steve would've spent the rest of the weekend like this. Unfortunately the Ten Rings waited for no holidays, so neither could SHIELD. Steve was already receiving report alerts on his phone as he packed up his overnight bag.

> **All the Ten Rings mentions were very much foreshadowing Iron Man 3.**

Steve chucked the bag into the passenger seat of the car, taking a moment to glance at his watch and try to plan out his surprise for Stiles' birthday.

The boy in question came out of the house with some post-Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches all wrapped up and ready to go.

> **It just isn’t Thanksgiving until everyone has suffered through several days’ worth of leftovers.**

"I really am sorry," Steve said again - for once not out of sincerity, but to throw Stiles off. "For not being here for your birthday."

Hopefully, Steve's idea would make up for it.

> **Back when Stiles’ POV stretched this far, the reason for Stiles’ sending Steve so many pictures of his birthday shenanigans was to make sure Steve didn’t feel bad about missing his birthday.**

"No problem," Stiles said, handing off the sandwiches and rocking on his heels as Steve set them on top of his bag in the car. "Just give me a call when you can, okay?"

"I will," Steve said, shutting the door and heading back inside. He went to his room to pick up the one thing he hadn't packed before, and came out to meet the Stilinskis in the living room.

"Listen," Steve said, knowing both John and Stiles were staring at the folded flag. He held it out to Stiles. "I...I appreciate this, I do. But I think there's a difference between holding onto the past and drowning in it - so you should keep it." Stiles opened his mouth, protest already in his eyes, and Steve added, "Or at least keep it safe for me."

> **This is Steve’s first step away from his depression, actually. He has the awareness to realize that surrounding himself with his past and his loss will only lead to wallowing and more depression. While he may _want_ to hold on to Bucky’s flag, he knows he shouldn’t.**

Stiles tilted his head. "You want _me_ to keep it safe?" he asked dubiously.

Steve nodded. "Bucky woulda hit me upside the head, anyway, if I kept it."

> **Stiles isn’t keeping the flag safe for Steve – he’s keeping Steve safe from the flag. And yes, Bucky absolutely would’ve hit Steve upside the head for wallowing.**

Stiles snorted. But despite his cavalier countenance, he took the flag back in both hands with utmost gravity. Steve wondered if Stiles had looked up the flag code at some point. Actually, who's Steve kidding, of course he did.

> **Stiles is holding it the same way Steve carried it from Stiles’ room to his guest room – one hand over, one hand under.**

"I'll keep this safe if you keep yourself safe," Stiles said. He bit his lip, glanced sidelong in his father's direction, then murmured, "Deal?"

> **Stiles is keenly aware that Steve is struggling with depression, and that Steve’s job is so dangerous that he wouldn’t even need to be particularly suicidal to die.**

_Oh_ , the sneaky little jerk. He was definitely a Barnes boy, all right. Steve could feel his heart bursting at the thought.

> **So, you know those occasional meta about how most personality traits can be both positive and negative, including the ability to manipulate people? If you’re not sure, just think of those Slytherin positivity posts on Tumblr. This is an example of how manipulation can be used for good. We see another one in Season 1 when Stiles manipulates Scott out of his panic attack by giving him the inhaler – an idea which he absolutely got from Steve.**

With a nod, he agreed. "Deal."

As John gave Steve a goodbye handshake, Stiles set the flag on the coffee table to follow him outside.

Despite all of Stiles' Californian shivering, it was warm for late November. Steve was going to spend the next few weeks desperately missing this kind of weather. He stood by the car for a moment, trying to think of what to say, then realized there was nothing else _to_ say.

> **I make a lot of California jokes (and other locational or East Coast vs West Coast jokes) to take advantage of my location. My family home’s zipcode is right next door to where Tony’s Malibu mansion was, and I’ve spent the last two years living in the part of Northern California that is most likely right next door to where Beacon Hills is supposed to be. On top of that, not only is the show filmed at my old high school – which my little brother is now also attending – from Season 3 onwards, I just graduated from Scott’s dream school (UC Davis). I am abusing my locational knowledge for everything it’s worth.**

So without a word, he pulled Stiles into a hug, who returned it eagerly. After a solid minute, Stiles stepped back to let Steve get into the car.

> **Stilinski Family Hug ™**

"You'll bring this car back when you visit for the Winter holidays, right?" Stiles asked.

"I dunno," Steve said, revving up the engine before speaking again. "Tony has an awful lot of cars to choose from..."

> **Before the holidays got interrupted by the Mandarin, this was actually roughly the plan, that Steve would spend a day or two of the holidays with Tony and Pepper in Malibu after his time with the Stilinskis. And Tony would probably have lent Steve something terrible to drive up to Beacon Hills, like maybe a Ferrari or something. ~~Or a Porsche.~~**

Stiles was still laughing as Steve pulled out of the driveway.

Steve smiled over his shoulder one last time. He turned and drove out of the neighborhood, turning on the music from his iPod as he went.

> **One of my jabs at the notion that Steve would still struggle with technology years after coming out of the ice. It may not be intuitive to Steve like it would be for those of raised with it, but it’s not difficult to learn, either.**

Then, instead of turning right towards the interstate out of town, he turned left to go deeper into Beacon Hills.

He needed to take care of something he's sure Bucky would've done if he'd had the chance.

> **Bucky would’ve spoiled his sisters and their family rotten had he come back home after the war.**


	15. 3.7 - $10

Steve had a long and somewhat emotional phonecall with the Sheriff after calling him and telling him what he did. Ultimately John came around, agreeing to Steve's idea. They promised to keep their silence until Stiles' birthday. If he didn't find out himself - unlikely, but possible - Steve would call to tell him.

> **If you’re reading this author commentary, then you probably already know this, but just in case, the above phonecall is described from the Sheriff’s POV in[the first Snowflake ficlet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5504363/chapters/12713621).**

He was going into the Triskelion the day after that, for a briefing on the Ten Rings no less. Same route as always - probably on his way to the same exact briefing as always - but this time, when Steve stepped out of the elevator on his way over, Fury was waiting for him.

> **The “same exact briefing as always” is a joke on how people hold ‘update meetings’ just to look productive, even if or when they have absolutely nothing new to show you. These meetings are terrible.**

"How was your Thanksgiving?"

"...did you really wait by the elevator just to ask me that?" Steve asked, striding towards the briefing room. Fury fell into step beside him.

"This is a biometric building, Rogers, I don't need to wait," Fury said, handing Steve a file he was holding. "I don't have time to wait."

> **But he does set an alert letting him know when Steve Rogers is in the building, and when he gets in the elevator and asks for Fury’s floor.**

"Do we have time to do anything?" Steve said, flipping through the pages. Apparently, they lost track of a black market shipment of Stark weapons. Tony might've been right, after all. "Everyone seems panicked, but no one knows what they're panicking about."

Fury tapped in his code to get into the high-security corridor, Steve doing the same behind him. "That's the problem. We know something big is coming, but no idea what."

> **Oh, Fury, you really _don’t_. No one saw Iron Man 3 coming.**

Steve snorted. "So we're at 'hurry up and wait'?"

"Yup."

"And now we have to sit through a two-hour meeting explaining why we have to hurry up and wait?"

"Pretty much."

Steve sighed. "Well, I guess some things never change. Pointless meetings today are just like the pointless meetings in my day." He started to open the door, only for Fury to stop him.

> **P O I N T L E S S   M E E T I N G S   F O R E V E R**

"You still haven't answered my question, by the way," Fury said, hand on the door.

Steve tilted his head.

"How was your Thanksgiving?" Fury repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Steve pursed his lip in thought - not about the holiday itself, but how much he was willing to let Fury know.

Finally, he fished his wallet from his pocket, pulled out $10, and wordlessly handed it over.

> **While Steve has adjusted fairly well to modern currency values now, he probably wouldn’t have at the time of the Avengers movie.[$10 in 1945 had the same buying power as $127.55 back in 2012.](http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=10.00&year1=1945&year2=2012) Steve bet $127.55 on Fury not being able to impress him. That is a man with no fucks left to give.**


	16. 3.8 - Steve and Tony are Bros

Steve was doing his final equipment checks with the STRIKE team when he got a call from Stiles on his birthday. Steve took a look at the Caller ID and the time, and grinned. All around the gigantic table where their weapons and kits were all spread out, his team stared at him in surprise.

> **It’s actually extremely unprofessional for Steve to take a personal phone call during equipment checks right before a mission, and most of the time, it’s really not something he would do. Unfortunately, I couldn’t yet believably make him hang out with the STRIKE team outside of a professional context, but the entire point of this phone-call/scene was for the STRIKE team to overhear it, so I had to resort to this handwaving. :( Kind of embarrassing, actually, but oh well.**

"Something funny, Rogers?" Rollins asked. Right across from Steve, Rumlow looked up, equally curious.

Smiling, Steve put his phone on speaker, then answered the call.

"GRAND UNCLE BUCKY?!" Stiles yelled. His tinny voice filled the prep room with such teenage indignation that Steve burst out laughing, much to the shock of his team. "GRAND UNCLE BUCKY?!"

> **This was originally a one-off, throw-away line, but it was incredibly popular, to the point it’s basically become what this fic is known for. So now, it’s immortalized in the series summary. :P**

In the background, Steve could hear more laughter from two other men - one definitely the Sheriff, and the other most likely being Mr. Keller.

"I take it," Steve drawled. "You got my birthday gift?"

"You bought me a car!" Stiles said, sounding like he still wasn't sure if it was real. "Steve, I - that's so much- I can't-"

"Yes you can," Steve said. "As I'm sure you can tell, your father already agreed to it."

"Yeah," Stiles ground out. "And then didn't tell me a damn thing-"

"It was supposed to be a surprise," Steve defended.

> **Steve doesn’t have much going on in his own life, he gets his kicks where he can via Stiles.**

"Oh, I was surprised, all right," Stiles declared. There was a beeping noise, and suddenly the half-suppressed laughter from the background was a lot clearer. Stiles must've put Steve on speaker, too. "Dad said we were gonna go and get a car today and I nearly cried, except when I got here, Mr. Keller was all 'oh, I was wondering when you were gonna come and pick up your jeep'. What the fuck, Steve?!"

Stiles sounded like he was smiling by the end, so Steve wasn't too worried. Especially since John's admonishment of, "Language!" sounded more cheerful than anything else. The half-dozen agents standing around the table were staring at Steve's phone with confused amusement. Rumlow even tilted his head for explanation.

"Happy Birthday, Stiles," Steve said, which alleviated some of their confusion.

> **Actually, this line is completely redundant since Steve just asked if Stiles got his birthday gift. I’m an idiot. *headdesk***

"Steve!" He couldn't see Stiles' flailing, but he could just imagine it. "At least let me pay you back what I have, and then-"

"No," Steve said. "It's a gift, not a loan."

"But-"

"I can afford it, Stiles," Steve said. Rumlow snorted, turning his attention back to his radio, but still keeping an ear on Steve's conversation. "Really, it's no problem."

"...I have most of the money," Stiles began.

"So treat yourself," Steve said. "Not every day you turn sixteen."

"Steve," Stiles said, drawing out his name.

"If nothing else," Steve continued. "Gas is pretty expensive, these days."

> **Gas cost an average of 15 cents a gallon in 1945 – adjusted for inflation, roughly the equivalent of $1.91 in 2012 dollars. No wonder the climate changed. (For context, the actual average gas price of 2012 was $3.51, which would’ve been 28 cents in 1945.)**

At that, most of the table snorted in unison amusement, and Stiles yelped in surprise, then asked, "Uh, did I call you in the middle of something?"

Steve opened his mouth, but then Martinez and Rollins both shouted, "Happy Birthday!" Most of the table started snickering again.

> **Since I’m already handwaving the lack of professionalism, I might as well go all in.**

"Um, sorry," Stiles started.

"Don't be," Steve said, glaring at the team. They grinned back, unrepentant, and Steve rolled his eyes. "It's nothing, I'm just babysitting for a bunch of five-year-olds masquerading as combat veterans."

"Five-and-a- _half_ ," Rumlow said without looking up, deep voice at such odds with the petulant phrasing that it sent them all into peels of badly-suppressed laughter.

> **I laughed way more than I should’ve when I wrote this line.**

"Oh my god," Stiles said, also laughing. "I can't believe we trust you to protect our national security."

As the laughter subsided, Steve said, "I'm serious, Stiles. Your father's going to put his half of the money into your college fund, so have fun with your half. Get yourself a new computer. Do something fun with Scott. Or hell, go buy something nice for that girl you like."

> **Which is how Stiles was able to afford all that crap for Lydia’s birthday in Season 2. :P**

"But...it's a lot!" Stiles cried out.

"Then treat yourself a lot," Steve deadpanned. Rumlow snorted again.

"But not too much," John's voice cut in. "Because with that much money, it's time Stiles learned financial responsibility."

Stiles groaned. Meanwhile, the agents grinned as everyone glanced sidelong at Thompson, who was the epitome of financial _ir_ responsibility. Thompson glared back, making punching motions towards Martinez. Rollins leaned over the table in quiet laughter and Rumlow rolled his eyes towards the heavens, sharing his exasperation with Steve.

> **And if you look to your left, you can see the author humanizing the STRIKE team members, so that later scenes with their deaths or HYDRA connections hurt _that_ much more.  >:)**

"Happy Birthday, Stiles," Steve repeated. "Have fun, and tell me where you go first, okay?"

"Are you kidding?" Stiles cried out. "I'mna pick Scott up from work and we're going straight to Big Five!"

"Big Five?" Steve asked.

"Sporting goods," John drawled from the background.

"Um, sorry for calling you in the middle of work," Stiles said. Before Steve could tell him not to be, he added, "And thank you. For not letting me lose my mom's car."

Steve smiled sadly at his agents as he un-speakered the phone and brought it up to his ear.

> **I actually regret using “un-speakered” here. That parlance is very much a modern linguistic inflection. Steve is far more likely to say/think, ‘took the phone off speaker’ or something to that effect. *headdesk***

"You're welcome," Steve said. "Now go. Have fun. Wrack up a big gas bill. Make your mom proud, okay?"

"That'll take at least three speeding tickets," Stiles said.

Just before the phone beeped _End Call_ at him, the last thing Steve heard was John's, "Don't you even dare!"

Steve foresaw many traffic safety reiterations in Stiles' future.

> **Oh, Steve, you have no idea.**

He pocketed the phone, and turned his attention back to his team.

"What the hell was that about?" Rumlow asked.

"Do you know about my sergeant from the war?" Steve asked. "Bucky Barnes?" Rollins made a choking noise beside him, and Rumlow shot him a warning glare. Rollins must've been a Bucky Barnes fan, then. Possibly Rumlow, too, if his subtle twitching was anything to go by. "His niece died a few years ago, and the family had to sell her car, but no one else bought it yet. Her kid earned most of the money to buy it back, but not enough. Last week, I paid for it, and told the dealer that when he asked, to tell him it was a gift from his Grand Uncle Bucky. Today's his sixteenth birthday."

> **> :)**

The agents all laughed at that. When their youngest teammate, Zhang, reached over to hold out a hand for a high-five, Steve returned it. Rumlow shook his head ruefully.

"You're a good guy, Cap," he said, smiling in amusement and turning his attention towards his kit.

A little while after the pre-combat checks were done, Steve got a text from John saying, _I just doubled Stiles' college fund with one deposit. With financial aid, we might not even need a loan._

 _Glad to hear it,_ Steve texted back.

> **Random aside: a lot of fics have Scott going to community college while Stiles goes to university, which led to some meta about how Scott isn’t an idiot and should also be going to university. In reality, it’s the other way around – Stiles should also be going to community college, and it has nothing to do with grades. In California, it is _extremely_ common for students to go to community college for the first year or two of post-secondary education, and then transfer to a university, because it is so much cheaper that way, and you still graduate with that Bachelor’s degree in the end. I saved my family somewhere around $35,000 by doing that (and that’s including the cost of living, not just tuition), and I actually got two extra degrees in the process (Associates’ degrees from the community college). **
> 
> **This goes especially for UC schools (“University of California”), as they are much more expensive than CSU schools (“California State University”), and both Davis (Scott’s dream school) and Berkeley (Stiles’ dream school) are UC schools. UC Davis is particularly transfer friendly; at the beginning of the year, you’ll see banners say things like, “Welcome Class of 2019 and Transfer Class of 2017” and they have special student housing set aside for transfer students, because there are just that many. While not to the extent of UC Davis, UC Berkeley also has a lot of transfer students. If the Stilinskis have ample savings, get financial aid, and Stiles goes to community college for the first few years of college, then he may very well be able to get his college degree without incurring student debt – especially if, unlike my dumb ass, he stops with the bachelor’s degree. All the money I saved my family will get wiped out within the first _semester_ of law school. **
> 
> **Though on another aside, while Berkeley may be a more well-known school (which is probably why they referenced it in the show), San Jose State University – a CSU school – is much better for law-enforcement related degrees and law enforcement programs, so that’s probably where Stiles would _actually_ want to go.**

For the rest of the day, Steve was bombarded with texts of what Stiles was up to. It started with a picture of a shocked Scott ( _I told Scott last week I wouldn't be able to afford the jeep._ ). Then a picture of Stiles sitting on the hood of his jeep, likely taken by Scott ( _New profile picture!_ ). Then a selfie of him and Scott holding a bunch of brand new lacrosse gear ( _You told me to treat myself!_ ). Then there were several pictures of cake, ice-cream, and shakes that Stiles indulged in, ending with a picture of Stiles laying on a couch, clutching his stomach and looking like he was in pain.

 _I REGRET NOTHING!_ Stiles texted with that picture, and Steve laughed.

Steve's favorite message of the day, though, was from John in the evening, just before that last one of Stiles on the couch. It was a picture taken from halfway across a small parking lot. Stiles and Scott were sitting in the front seats of the jeep, both drinking smoothies and laughing together.

 _It's been over six years since I got picked up from work in this jeep,_ John said. Steve could almost hear the tears.

> **Actually, it’s probably closer to seven or eight years, now that I think about it. Author can’t math.**

_Are you okay?_ Steve asked. _With Stiles having your wife's car back?_

 _I wouldn't have tried to help him get it if I weren't,_ John answered. _I'll be okay. Just a little bittersweet. It's a bit like having a piece of her back, again._

Steve's breath caught in his throat, remembering when Stiles said almost exactly the same thing just a few months before.

When he got John's next text, saying, _Hopefully he doesn't try to make his mother TOO proud, though,_ Steve's laughter came with tears.

> **This was originally supposed to be the end of jokes about bad driving genes, but it turned out to be a lot funnier than it sounded in my head, so I kept running with it. Someone let me know when it stops getting funny, and I’ll stop using them.**

The day after, Steve and the team were flying out to a remote Ten Rings base just outside of Mosul for their first mission as a STRIKE team.

It was a tough mission, predominantly because no one was ever supposed to find out they were here - least of all Al-Qaeda, though they didn't want the Kurds to know, either.

Steve actually had to use his advanced strength several times, and still broke a leg anyway. By the end of the mission, the only good news they were able to come back with was that the Ten Rings had definitely been there. Unfortunately, that hadn't been in much doubt beforehand, and the actual weapons receipts they'd been looking for there were nowhere to be found.

> **That’s because they’re in Florida. ;)**

Steve swung by Stark Tower to give Tony the bad news, himself.

"Did you find out how recently they'd been there?" Tony asked when Steve was done, pulling up an entire wall of holographic files. "Because I have a hard time believing this was a coincidence. They're always one step ahead-"

"SHIELD is investigating a potential leak," Steve said. "But so far, we haven't found anything."

Tony sighed as he stabbed his finger through the wall. "Right when they're speeding up activity, too."

> **Just in time for Christmas!**

"There's a hypothesis in SHIELD that they aren't actually speeding up activity, just trying to look like it to disrupt the upcoming holidays," Steve said. "And even then - you've been out of the weapons business for a while-"

"Not compared to how long I was in it," Tony said. He abandoned his wall to go over to the bar and grab a bottle of expensive-looking whiskey. He also grabbed two crystal glasses and brought them back, now standing on the other side of the wall and looking at it backwards. He poured himself a glass, then held up the empty one in an offer.

"Doesn't work on me, remember?"

"No, it just works _less_ on you," Tony sniffed, pouring Steve a finger and handing him the glass. He sipped at his own as he glared at the visual representation of his investigation.

> **If Steve’s metabolism is four times greater than an average man of the same size as him, then that shouldn’t mean that he _can’t_ get drunk, but that he needs at least four times as much alcohol in order _to_ get drunk. Now, this might mean that he can’t get drunk off of weaker drinks like beer, ciders, alcopops, etc. (because he’d piss it back out before drinking enough) – but hard liquors, he should be able to at least get a buzz out of. The only reasonable explanation for why he wasn’t able to get himself shitfaced after Bucky’s death is that his booze was all leftover bottles from the bar itself, and after the bombing, the barkeep only left behind the watered-down booze, taking the good stuff with him when he relocated. Steve – who mostly grew up on watered down booze, anyway – was too grief-stricken to notice.**

Steve shrugged and sipped at the whiskey. Until Bruce finally managed to get his metabolism-slowing drugs working, it wouldn't get him drunk, but it was still good whiskey.

> **Four or five shots of high-proof liquor should have the same effect on him as one shot of lower-proof vodka or whiskey has on most other people. For the sake of preserving canon, I implied that there’s another physiological phenomena going on that makes him still at least partially subject to the effects of alcohol poisoning and that’s why he can’t just get drunk, but that’s very much a hand-wave.**

He watched as Tony moved files around, made two phone calls, sent out several e-mail inquiries, and messaged Pepper and Happy at least half a dozen times with ideas. Eventually, though, Tony wiped the whole wall away and flopped onto his couch.

"At least I'm going back to Malibu, tomorrow," Tony said. He looked out the window, out over New York. "And staying there for winter," he added.

> **Just in time for Iron Man 3!**

Steve laughed. "You've gone native, haven't you?"

"Native?"

"You've turned into a Californian," Steve concluded. "Anything less than perfect weather and you bundle up."

"Damn straight," Tony said shamelessly. "There is a reason I base my business out of SoCal, now."

Steve snorted. "Not much better in Northern California, either. It was still in the 50s when I went and my nephew was shivering."

> **This is legit. Down in SoCal, we start shivering around the mid-60s. That said, we are all well aware that we are total babies about cold weather. We make up for it by being extremely blasé about fires, earthquakes, and traffic jams from hell. (That joke about not getting out of bed for anything less than a 4.0 earthquake is not only legit, it’s understated – I’ve slept right through or ignored those, and won’t get out of bed until a 4.5, _at least_.)**

Tony gave him a speculative look. "Your nephew?"

God, he wished he could still get drunk. He hoped Bruce got his experiment working, soon.

> **Steve is worried that he’s “moving too fast”/bonding too much, too soon. He may not be wrong. >:)**

"I'm naming him my next of kin," Steve admitted. "And - his family did take me in back in my day, so..."

> **This is actually incorrect terminology, as next-of-kin is a legal term meaning the next family member in line, according to a predetermined hierarchy/formula. Steve is naming Stiles his heir, proxy, beneficiary, etc., and in effect setting the legal foundation for Stiles to be treated as next-of-kin even in contexts where he wasn’t officially named the legal recipient of the relevant rights ahead of time. However, he is not technically next of kin as he is not actually related to Steve. Additionally, in that legal formula, Stiles is actually[10th in line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_of_kin#United_States), if Bucky had at least one member of every “kind” of relative in the NOK hierarchy. It’s a testament to the tragedy of their lives that despite this, Stiles actually _is_ Bucky’s NOK. (In Next-of-Kin rankings, spouses and relations through spouses are not considered. While marrying Steve would make Steve into Bucky’s first, go-to person for all legal matters even ahead of Stiles, Steve is still not actually next-of-kin.) **
> 
> **Technically and legally speaking, Steve probably does have some ‘next of kin’ somewhere – maybe some second cousins or something (in that it’s unlikely his parents and grand-parents were _all_ only-children, and that no one had descendants who are still alive today). But given the implication that once his parents (and his grandfather Ian, if we go by comics canon) never contacted their family in Ireland again after reaching America, that would mean over a century of no contact. If this ever somehow reached court, it’s unlikely anyone would support random Irish citizens as being closer relatives to Steve than the boy Steve has named as his medical proxy, beneficiary, and heir in legal documentation.**

Tony smiled. "Glad to hear it, Cap." He paused. "I never saw you smile until after you spent time with them."

Steve nodded, staring down into his glass as he leaned against the back of Tony's couch. "You know, when he told people about me visiting, he never told anyone I'm Captain America. Time of his life when you care most about all the stupid things your peers think of you and he didn't say a word. Told everyone I'm his 'Uncle Steve'."

"Too bad your name isn't Sam," Tony quipped. Steve glared, and Tony laughed. "What? It would've been fitting!"

> **This joke is going to come back once Steve actually meets Sam. :P**

Steve rolled his eyes. "I'm calling them tomorrow, actually - a SHIELD lawyer is gonna go over and finalize the paperwork."

"Yay for the dead tree floods," Tony said, holding up his glass in a toast. "And may the bureaucratic gods have mercy on their souls.

Thankfully, they did.

Steve video-called the Stilinskis from his guest suite the next day. Sitting on a couch so soft that it was slowly driving Steve insane, he had JARVIS start the call for him. The TV screen filled with Stiles fiddling with a camera.

"Steve!" Stiles greeted with a grin.

"How're things going?"

"I think I might die of bloodloss from all the papercuts, but otherwise I'm fine," Stiles said. He held up his hand to show that he did, indeed, actually have a tiny papercut on the side of his palm, just under his little finger.

> **Does anyone ever stop and think about how weird it is that we get papercuts? Paper is so flimsy that we crumple, tear, and otherwise destroy it _accidentally_ on a regular basis, yet without us even noticing, it can slice right through our skin!**

Steve smiled, shaking his head.

"Stiles," Johns said with exasperation. Stiles pulled away from the camera enough that Steve could see John waving a band-aid at his son, sitting opposite from a woman in what was the West Coast's idea of professional attire.

> **Generally speaking, the West Coast – California in particular – is not so hung up on formality as the East Coast. My dad complains about this all the time. He sometimes travels for work, and even if he’s doing the exact same job, he can do it wearing jeans and sandals in Silicon Valley, but he had to wear a full suit when he worked in D.C.**

"Captain," she greeted. "I'm Ms. Mariana Lopez, the HR lawyer for SHIELD's West Coast Division. We've already gone through most of the paperwork, so I'm sure we can finish the rest before Stiles, here, bleeds out from his war wounds."

> **I really hope none of you have ever had to deal with a military intelligence bureaucracy before and know just how much I’m bullshitting this implied SHIELD structure.**

Stiles pouted at the humor being taken at his expense, while John snorted, and Steve grinned. California was always less formal than New York or D.C., and the longer he lived in the 21st century, the more he could see the appeal.

He doubted any of the lawyers out of the Triskelion would've been willing to call him "Stiles" instead of his legal first name.

"I think I've signed more things in the last two hours than I have in my entire life," Stiles moaned, fiddling with the band-aid.

> **He’s not wrong. At only 16 years old, Stiles really hasn’t had to sign many things or otherwise do a lot of paperwork. This is the first time he’s had to deal with any, directly.**

"At least all this stuff is only in one language and one legal system," Ms. Lopez said, smiling at Stiles' martyrdom. "SHIELD works in global security. This is a _break_ compared to what I'm usually dealing with."

Stiles looked suitably horrified, and John looked even more amused at Stiles' horror.

> **This one was for all the law students and lawyers. :P**

"Anything we have to worry about?" Steve said.

"Mostly just the paperwork untangling the age issue," Lopez said, picking up a paperclipped sheaf of legal documents and holding it up so Steve could see it. "It'll mean all of you need to sign a few more papers so that Mr. Stilinski has Power of Attorney as your next-of-kin's legal guardian, without being your actual immediate relative. Apart from the legalistic versions of 'hurry up and wait', I don't think that will be a problem. We might need to send this via courier for security reasons, but that's about it."

> **Since I actually fucked up the legal terminology: Steve is officially stating that Stiles is his ‘real’ medical proxy, but that until Stiles turns 18, the Sheriff is the ‘substitute’/next medical proxy in line, as Stiles is “unavailable”/”indisposed” due to his age. At 16, many medical establishments would be willing to take a medical decision from a mature 16-year-old, in the absence of other relatives or people to make medical decisions. However, SHIELD is not most medical establishments, and if Steve didn’t do this, there is every possibility that SHIELD would take advantage of Stiles’ status as a minor to force a medical decision about Steve. This is also laying down the groundwork for Steve not just considering Stiles his family, but both Stilinskis – if Stiles can’t make a decision, then the Sheriff can, because while Steve may be _closest_ to Stiles, he is also close to the Sheriff. **
> 
> **“Hurry up and wait” is an old military joke about how often military life seems to be ‘doing nothing’, with short periods of intense action punctuating it. You have to hurry up to get to the right spot, but then wait there for-fucking-ever.**

Steve shrugged. "If worst comes to worst, I'll just sign it when I visit for Christmas."

Visiting for Christmas never happened.

They'd planned for it, extensively so. Christmas fell right in the middle of Hanukkah, this year. Stiles was already planning on getting a decorated cactus just for Steve's visit. Scott and Melissa had invited him to attend Christmas Mass with them, and Steve had gotten presents and everything.

> **It’s doubtful that Steve and his mother could ever afford a Christmas tree (I don’t think it was Irish tradition, anyway?). And then, of course, he was living in a Jewish household, and while the Barnes were a bit better-off than the Rogers, it wasn’t by much, so there definitely weren’t any Christmas trees then. But still, the imagery of a Christmas tree would be in Steve’s head, so that Stiles was getting him a cactus instead of a ‘proper’ tree would be yet another instance of Steve preferring some completely bizarre 21st century affection, as opposed to something similar enough his own era as to cause discomfort when it isn’t actually the same. (That, and because Bucky and his sisters would also have gotten Steve a Christmas Cactus back in their day, if they could. The snark is genetic.)**

Then Tony had to go antagonize a terrorist on international television, get himself blown up, and uncover the biggest military-industrial corruption scandal in American history.

> **It took me forever to summarize the entirety of Iron Man 3 into one, pithy sentence.**

"So I don't think I'll be able to make it," Steve concluded when he called John and Stiles to let them know.

> **This whole ‘skimming over it’ thing was on purpose, since I was going to spend so much time on it in Stiles’ POV. I wanted to avoid too much overlap between Stiles’ POV and Steve’s (which is the biggest reason why I cut Stiles’ story to start around here, instead of all the way back to Thanksgiving or even before). By skimming over Iron Man 3 – which really isn’t as dramatic for superheroes as it is for everyone else, after dealing with an alien invasion – I was able to spend more time on it in Stiles’ POV without it becoming repetitive.**

"Wait, Iron Man's alive?!" Stiles cried out.

Steve sighed, shifting the earpiece and pushing his phone around the smooth tabletop. "Yes. Tony's alive, so's Pepper Potts, and the President has been returned safely. The Vice President is getting arrested for conspiring with Aldrich Killian."

"Holy shit," Stiles said. It was a testament to how ridiculous this entire situation was that John didn't even chastise his son for the language.

"I'm really sorry," Steve began. "I wish I could come, but-"

"You're needed over there," John cut in. "Don't ever apologize for that. There are lives at stake in what you do, Steve, we can handle waiting a few more months before seeing you again." A pause, and Steve was sure the Sheriff was shaking his head. "Jesus Christ, the _President_ getting _kidnapped_ , that alone..."

> **Seriously, though. Could you imagine the chaos and ramifications of something like that happening in the real world? Take a minute and imagine if President Obama were kidnapped by a terrorist just half a year after another 9/11-like event, or if President Bush had been kidnapped half a year after the _actual_ 9/11. SHIELD’s drastic militarization, the building resentments of the Avengers around the world, and the Sokovia Accords make a lot more sense, now, don’t they?**

Steve sighed in relief. He leaned back in the comfy chair of Tony's hotel room, taking care to tilt his eyes away from the bright sunset. His gaze drifted over the half-dozen devices spread across the table, Pepper's detritus from trying to wrangle Stark Industries in the wake of the week of insanity. The woman herself was cuddled up with Tony on the bed, both of them passed out from exhaustion.

"How about you?" John asked. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Steve said. "Tony and Pepper are sleeping, and reinforcements are coming in soon."

"Reinforcements?" Stiles asked.

"Natasha's been sending Tony all the information on the Mandarin that SHIELD has ever since Happy - uh, Tony's driver and head of security - was hit by the bomb," Steve explained. "So she's coming in to help clean things up. Bruce is coming in because Tony doesn't trust doctors. And Pepper may actually need his expertise."

> **This was me taking a swipe at all the meta about how the Avengers seem to abandon each other during their individual movies. I figured they weren’t actually abandoning each other – they were just working separately or off-screen, especially since these events typically happen in such a small and rapid time-span, that the Avengers wouldn’t be able to _get_ there until it’s over, anyway.**

"How come?" Stiles asked. Steve could just imagine Stiles leaning forward in curiosity.

"That's not my place to say," Steve said. "But - everything will be fine, just things are kind of messy right now. SHIELD sent me here as security, we're all that worried."

"We understand," Stiles said. "Keep in touch, okay?"

"Will do," Steve promised.

"Good luck," John called out.

"And good night!" Stiles cried out.

The phone beeped at him as the call ended.

He set it aside and looked up to see Pepper gently extricating herself from Tony's hold. She smoothed down his pillow-fluffed hair, then pulled on her night robe and joined Steve at the table.

"We don't actually need a babysitter, you know," Pepper said, prodding her digital artillery awake.

> **There is absolutely no logical reason for it, but I loved writing “digital artillery” to describe the miscellaneous communication devices Pepper would no doubt use for her work.**

"But you do need your friends," Steve said, pushing towards her the tablet she was reaching for. "And you need help."

"I don't want to be responsible for keeping you away from your family," she began, Steve shook his head.

"What about you?" he asked. "Where's your family?"

"Currently fighting about whose house me and Tony should spend the holidays with," she said, lips almost curling towards a smile. "And I'm one step away from settling this by flying everyone in to New York for Christmas."

> **I sometimes can’t help but wonder how extended family might react to Pepper dating Tony – and Tony coming over for Christmas or something. Can you imagine if you had a vague notion that your cousin worked for some big corporate bigwig, only to go visit family for the holidays and have a fucking superhero sitting on the couch and fixing that stupid light-up deer that haunts your grandmother’s home every Christmas?**

Steve laughed. "How will that go?"

"As long as we get them out by New Years, it'll be fine," Pepper said.

"Why New Years?"

"Because our New Years parties are not of the family friendly variety," she drawled. "But to be honest, bringing everyone in is a last resort. Tony's not going to rest if he's at the Tower. Too many resources available. I'm trying to talk everyone into going to my sister's home. Biggest house, kids there to play with, and when her husband and our mother can stop fighting over recipes for long enough to cooperate, they make a fantastic cooking team." Pepper paused to look over at Tony. "He could use a few home-cooked meals, right about now."

> **Especially after all those creepy smoothies from Iron Man 2. :P Well, he was living in Malibu. Those are the fuckers giving the rest of us Angelenos a bad name with all their stupid juice cleanses…**

Steve thought of undercooked turkey, singed cornbread, and uncomfortable office chairs.

"I know the feeling," he agreed.

> **Random aside: I can’t find it, but there’s a really good post somewhere about how food is often a literary short-cut to indicate a scene is supposed to be “warm” and upbeat, and how its degradation or absence is used to indicate a scene is supposed to be “cold” and downbeat. You can see this in the Harry Potter books – there are progressively less and less scenes and descriptions of food as the books go on and the story gets darker. In the Hunger Games, food was “tainted” by the fact it had been turned into a resource that kids fought to the death over (and then this got compounded when Katniss and Peeta saw how wasteful of it people in the Capitol would be, eating it and then puking it up just to eat more, whilst children are starving to death in the districts).**
> 
> **I use and abuse this trope a lot in this series – most of Steve’s scenes with the Stilinskis thus far have involved or had food (or even just snacks) in them, and this was even before Thanksgiving (which is an entire holiday dedicated to food). The only pre-Thanksgiving scenes that _don’t_ have food or food-references in them are the “memory” scenes – when Steve ruminates on the inhaler in the lacrosse scene, when Stiles is showing him all the family pictures, and when Stiles gives Steve his own inhaler. ;)**

With Pepper's help, he packed up the Hanukkah gifts and sent them to the Stilinskis. John got serious gifts like shirts, ties, and books...all of which contained gift cards to various "junk food" stores - donut joints, pastry stores, a diner chain, and even a chocolate shop - hidden inside them, well away from anywhere Stiles would find them. Stiles got a bunch of Avengers merchandise - ones not set to be released for a few more months. The first six days were one for each teammate. Then a laptop case featuring all of them - one of the only ones, since most had a tendency to cut out Nat, with many also cutting out Clint. On the last day, Stiles called Steve, cackling over his knock-off Captain America shirt, which had been nestled inside a dozen layers of wrapping paper. Each layer had a note with another quote from the street vendor's hilarious speech about why this shirt was Absolutely Not A Knock-Off as soon as he'd realized who Steve was.

> **My potshots at the Avengers merchandise shafting Clint and Nat so much. :|**

"I'm wearing this thing on my first day of school," Stiles declared, still breathless from laughing. "And I gave Scott the tee-shirts you sent for him. I'll try to make us match for the first day back."

> **Which he does! :P**

"Only 'try'?" Steve asked, leaning back on his own couch. He'd been swinging by to pick up a few things for spending a week at the Tower with Tony and Pepper, but then he'd found out he had a package waiting for him, plain cardboard with MERRY CHRISTMAS STEVE scrawled all over it in glitter-glue.

> **I was going to make a joke here about how Stiles probably got glitter everywhere, before remembering that _not_ getting it everywhere is usually the only reason people use glitter glue instead of legitimate glitter.**

"He'll agree to it, then forget, oversleep, and throw on the nearest clean shirt he finds," Stiles said dismissively. "Did you get your gift from us?"

> **This is pretty much how I get ready in the mornings.**

"Yeah," Steve said, stroking his finger tip over the wide edge of the phonograph horn. "Just this morning. I...thank you."

"All the outward appearances of music-players from your day, all the functionality of music-players from now," Stiles proclaimed. "That thing will play vinyl records, CDs, and casettes, and you can hook up your smartphone or your computer to it, too. Do you like it?"

> **These things are real, by the way. If you google “mp3 phonograph”, you’ll find all sorts of vintage turntables that can be connected to modern music players. :)**

"Yeah," Steve admitted. "It's perfect."

"Merry Christmas, Steve," Stiles said.

"Happy Hanukkah," Steve replied, already digging out the instruction manual. "Now help me set this thing up."

Steve spent winter holidays with Tony and Pepper, as well as Bruce for a few days, and Nat on and off. She came, left, came again, left again, then came back just in time to give Steve a friendly kiss for New Years.

The party was as outrageous as Pepper predicted. Tony kicked off the new year with a speech about how the terrorists only won when the people let them, inviting his nine-dozen guests to party on in defiance. Even Steve raised his drink and cheered to that.

"He puts on a good show," Steve told Tony's friend, Col. Rhodes.

"This is no show, man," Rhodes said, shaking his head in amusement. "This is the real deal. Tony honestly believes the best way to say 'fuck you' to his enemies is to throw a party showing off how great he's doing."

> **This is more of my potshot at fandom culture, especially (though not limited to) Stony, which continuously depicts Tony as secretly hating wild parties, and connecting his decline in enjoyment/participation in them with character growth. I resent this because it carries the implication that anyone who enjoys them is shallow, that people _only_ enjoy them to be popular, and that no one can _really_ enjoy them. As an introvert who loves wild parties, I greatly resent this backhanded implication, and this tendency to overwrite Tony’s canonical background and personality traits. That’s not to say I don’t understand they can turn into a very unhealthy infatuation – I just hate the idea that because some people party as an unhealthy coping mechanism, All Parties Are Bad and All Partying Is Bad and Tony will only become a ‘real’ person or a developed character once he stops. He can learn to have fun responsibly (which we even see hints of at the beginning of Age of Ultron). Character growth does not mean he has to stop enjoying things he was enjoying before, or that he has to enjoy different things because he’s “a different person” now.**

Tony certainly knew how to throw a party - and one everyone could partake in. Nat was enjoying herself behind the bar, rising up to meet every challenging drink requested of her and tossing bottles into the air as smoothly as she threw knives in the field. Some young scientist was holding court in the quiet circle of couches at the edge of the main party, where Bruce and half a dozen other party-goers were hanging on her every word. Steve nearly considered going over, but then he saw them drawing complicated diagrams on napkins and decided to stay where he was by the snack table.

> **I threw this in as foreshadowing Nat’s bartending at the beginning of Age of Ultron. I know a lot of people who do it for fun, and I see no reason why she wouldn’t. Not to mention it’s actually a really useful skill to have, as a spy.**

"He sure does," Steve said, and held up his drink. Rhodes clinked his margarita against Steve's beer. "Here's to good company..." He smiled at Rhodes after he took a sip. "Even if they are from the Chair Force."

"You sure those words aren't too long for you, Ground Pounder?" Rhodes challenged with a grin.

> **Inter-service rivalry. While at the end of the day, brothers may love each other deeply, every minute of the day _before_ that, they’ll be constantly bothering each other – and military service branches operate much the same way. Chair Force is a playfully derogatory nickname for the Air Force, while Ground Pounder is a playfully derogatory nickname for soldiers. “Soldiers” meaning a member of the Army – while in laymen’s terms, we often use ‘soldier’ to encompass all military servicemen and servicewomen, it actually only refers to those in the Army; name for a member of the Marines, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard are marine, sailor, air-man/woman, and guardsman/guardswoman, respectively).**

They spent a solid hour ribbing each other out and chatting about their military experiences, before Tony whisked Rhodes away to "teach those interns what it means to be a beaver". Steve didn't know what that meant beyond the fact it involved commandeering every plastic cup and paper plate Pepper let them get their hands on.

> **The MIT mascot is a beaver, “nature’s engineer”. Tony is building…something (I have no idea what) out of all the cups and plates. ;)**

"Hey, soldier," Nat greeted him when he eventually wandered over to the bar. "Come here often?"

"More often than is probably good for me," Steve said. Natasha laughed, making him a drink that looked better than it tasted and which Steve loved all the same.

> **This is my opinion on a lot of cocktails.**

The next morning, Tony stumbled into the kitchen, promising his first born to whoever made him coffee.

"You already promised your first born to six other people last night," Pepper gently reminded him, sipping at her tea at the counter.

"Then my seventh-born to whoever makes me coffee," Tony grumbled, taking a seat next to Pepper and burying his face in her shoulder. Pepper turned her head to kiss his forehead, and Tony preened without opening his eyes.

Silently laughing at Tony's expense, Steve started the coffee maker. He was just getting together the ingredients for his 'lazy crepes' when his phone alerted him to an incoming video chat. At Tony's flinch, he hurried out to the living room and answered the call.

> **Most pancake mixes will call for 2/3 cup water to 1 cup of mix. My lazy crepes recipe is to mix 2/3 milk and 2/3 vanilla/sweetened coffee creamer to 1 cup of mix. Then whatever heat you normally cook your pancakes at, cook the crepes at about half that. It takes a little longer to cook through – and takes a bit more guesswork, as you can’t rely on the batter bubbling to tell you when to flip – so use multiple pans or a _really_ big girdle (I recommend pans). Serve with berries or diced fruit (especially tangy fruit like strawberries – they go together much better than sweet fruit like bananas). You can also add an egg (greater structural integrity, less prone to falling apart, some protein), and if you don’t have sweetened coffee creamer, just use regular cream with some sugar, instead. You can also add hot chocolate mix or cinnamon for variety. ;)**

"HAPPY NEW YEAR!" two teenage boys shouted over the phone, making Steve doubly glad he'd taken the phone out of Tony's earshot.

Steve laughed, watching the boys crowd Stiles' laptop's camera. "Scott, Stiles," he greeted. They backed up a little so he could actually see their faces. "Happy New Year, boys. How's your year going so far?"

"It was good until Stiles got an idea," Scott said.

"Isn't that how most days go?" Steve asked, sitting on the couch to look out the glass walls as he talked to the boys.

"Hey!" Stiles protested.

Steve laughed, spending five minutes listening to the boys' very different versions of their midnight experiment with Dite Coke and Mentos, then their cake-off, and finally their taco-making competition with each other. John and Melissa were getting a good night's rest after the New Years night shift, and the boys themselves were already making big plans for the upcoming school year.

> **At this point, I basically headcanon that the McCalls and Stilinskis are just used to celebrating all holidays a little early or late so that Melissa and the Sheriff can take the shifts everyone else hates, knowing their sons are fine either just sticking with each other or celebrating ‘off-schedule’. As such, Steve will also get used to this over time.**

Halfway through an increasingly ridiculous story about a packet of Glow Sticks, Natasha swanned into the communal area, already dressed for another day. Or rather, Natalie Rushman, temporary liaison between the CEO of Stark Industries and SHIELD.

Steve got an idea.

> **And created a monster in the process.**

He silently gestured her over out of the line of sight of the camera, pointing towards his phone. She understood immediately, nodding in amusement.

"Hey, boys, a friend of mine wants to say hi," Steve said, and tilted his phone slightly as Nat came up behind him.

Scott's eyes sprung wide open in shock, and behind him, Stiles doubled over laughing as he realized who she was.

"This is Stiles' friend, Scott," Steve said, glancing up at Nat. She smirked, recognizing puppy love when she saw it. "Scott, this is my friend, Ms. Romanoff. I believe you know her as the Black Widow?"

> **When you think about it, I can’t help but wonder if Nat’s career as a _spy_ ended with the publicity from the Battle of New York. I mean, she’s skilled enough that it’s unlikely, but imagine how much harder her job must be, now?**

"Hello, Scott," she said, and probably just made Scott's entire year if the look on his face was anything to go by. "Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year, ma'am," Scott said shyly. Stiles wasn't even trying to hide his laughter, but Scott didn't notice him at all. "You're my favorite Avenger."

"Oh, really?" she asked. "How come?"

Steve was honestly expecting an answer about her beauty. Maybe something about how pretty she was, given this was Scott.

It was neither.

"You're like the most badass Avenger and you don't even have fancy weapons or superpowers!" The boy promptly flushed as he looked at Steve as he added. "Not that fancy weapons or superpowers are a bad thing."

> **Dramatic Irony for the win. One thing I love about fanfiction is the amount of dramatic irony so readily available with so little effort on my part as the writer. :P**

Nat's laughter was both genuine and surprised. "Well, thank you - that's not something I hear often."

"That's because people are stupid, especially other guys..." Scott spared a moment to look pointedly at Stiles, who snickered unabashedly. "I think I might be single-handedly responsible for most of the hits on that video if you flipping an alien over you with your legs."

Steve knew the video. Hundreds of hours' worth of video footage had flooded the Internet after the less-than-hour-long battle had ended. Tony had made sure the whole team knew about the most popular ones - especially Steve, being the main 'face' of the Avengers alongside Tony.

> **This was probably his first real introduction to social media – and how social media (and modern media in general) is so different from the media as he knew it in his day.**

"I tried to do that weird back-flip-punch thing you did when you knocked that alien off the bus," Scott continued. "It, uh, didn't work - I broke my nose."

"Did you you remember to keep your arms straight?" Nat said. "And your knees tucked in?"

"Uh..."

Steve and Stiles shared a look over the video-chat as Nat gave Scott some advice to help him do flips, hand-springs, and other gymnastics moves Scott had apparently been trying to imitate since he first went on a Black Widow video spree after the Battle of New York. Scott actually started taking notes halfway through.

> **I know I’ve said this before, but seriously, Scott’s acrobatics and sudden lacrosse skill in Season 1 only make sense if he was already steadily practicing them beforehand, and the lycanthropy only gave him the stamina to extensively do what he’d already been able to do beforehand (if not sustain/do for long). The fact that Scott suddenly got athletic prowess from the Bite – and that it was something he ‘turned off’ in Season 4 – really speaks to the producers’ collective lack of athletic experience. Sports _do not work that way_. Seriously, speed, strength, and stamina are only a fraction of what it takes to be a good athlete. Speaking as one of the most unathletic, asthmatic, and anti-activity people you will ever meet, I feel like this granting of athletic or martial prowess with supernatural capability is really just shitting on sports, martial arts, and basically any physical skill in general. (And don’t get me started on Kira magically getting katana skills when she fixed the thunder katana. Was it really that hard to give her a line or two where she mentions her mom making her learn how to use a katana all her life, in preparation for this? No extra scenes needed, and a reasonable explanation!)**

"When in doubt, look up ballet and gymnastics videos," Nat concluded. "You can figure out the martial arts side of it after. Most of it is about learning how to control your body, and gymnasts and ballerinas do that best."

"Thank you so much," Scott said. Nat smiled, and Steve got the feeling it wasn't even as fake as it usually was.

"Good luck, Scott," she said, waving at Steve's phone before wandering over to the kitchen to steal some of Tony's coffee.

For a moment, there was starstruck silence. Then Stiles pushed his dazed friend out of the way and said to Steve in a low voice, "Seriously, thank you for that."

"No problem," Steve said. "I'll let you two get to work on Scott's moves."

"It's a good thing I already have his mom on speed dial," Stiles snarked.

> **This was me very subtly implying a potential reason for why Melissa and the Sheriff don’t get easily suspicious of scrapes and bruises, or even some more serious injuries, from the boys.**

"Hey!" Scott immediately protested.

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Bye, Steve."

"Bye, boys."

Ending the chat, Steve spared a moment to admire the view of his hometown, before going back to the kitchen, where it turned out Bruce had also come in. He was fishing around for some tea as Steve went to the counter with all the ingredients still where he left them.

Bruce found his tea, and put some water to boil in an electric kettle as Steve started mixing things, humming Auld Lang Syne quietly enough to spare Tony a worsening headache.

> **Real friends are the ones who make fun if you while you’re drunk, but still keep the light and volume down when you’re hungover. :P**

Ever since coming out of the ice, Steve had longed to be with his friends and those he'd considered family - either back in the right time with them, or dead just like them.

But the last few months gave him new friends and adoptive family to be with, to want to be with. While some part of Steve felt a little guilty about it, most of him wondered what his old friends and family would think of his new one.

> **The Howling Commandos would love to meet a bunch of actual, howling…well, not commandos, but still soldiers. :P**

A few days later, Steve had to run into the Triskelion in the middle of the night for an emergency situation that thankfully turned out to be nothing. He came back out to a text from John bemoaning stupid teenagers sneaking around the woods in the dark. He laughed at John's musings about hiring a babysitter again, and thought that Bucky would probably be proud of how much their own "little shit" streaks had passed on to the boys.

> **And so Season 1 of Teen Wolf begins. ;)**

The next day, Tony and Pepper dived into rebuilding their company. Steve and Nat had their hands full trying to figure out the terrorist landscape in the aftermath of the Ten Rings and Mandarin fiasco. Even Bruce was happily busy, some new discovery earning him notoriety for his big brain instead of his big alter ego. Clint was finally cleared for active duty again, and the celebratory dinner was the Avengers' first reunion - minus Thor - ever since they parted ways after the Battle of New York.

Despite all the fancy restaurants available up and down the East Coast, Clint insisted on taking them to a small diner in Bed-Stuy, run by someone who lived in the apartment building he "accidentally owned".

"How do you accidentally own something?" Steve asked, bewildered, as they drove to the diner in one of Tony's only cars that could actually seat five people. "Especially an entire apartment building?"

> **This is a reference to the last few years of Hawkeye comics, especially the run with Kate Bishop and Clint Barton.**

"I got kind of bored over the last few months out of commission," Clint said. "See, I found this dog after it got hit by a car, and around the same time my old intern came to visit me. Well, she was just a SHIELD intern but we got along and she does archery almost as well as I do so I call her my intern. Anyway, the dog, the intern, and then some douche-bro mafia wannabes who think shutter shades and tracksuits make a good combination..."

> **Bro.**

As Clint recounted the increasingly ridiculous tale, they made it to the diner, and Steve could see why Clint liked it. Retro without being vintage, and a staff that didn't blink an eye at the Heroes of New York in their establishment. They gave the team a quiet booth in the back and a menu that promised portions which would could satisfy even Steve, let alone everyone else.

> **Rule of thumb: the more expensive or fancy a restaurant is, the less or smaller the portions will be. It’s the cheap-ass holes in the wall that have the food that _satisfies_ you.**

Halfway through their dinner, Steve got a text from Stiles saying, _Scott's fallen in love with the cute new girl at school, and she seems to like him back._

"You may no longer be the love of Scott's life," Steve gravely informed Natasha, showing her the text.

She smiled as Steve started explaining the New Years video chat to an increasingly amused Clint.

"Tell him not to try Nat's moves until after she's gone on a date with him," Clint said around a mouthful of food. "Take my word for it, broken noses do _not_ make a good impression on a first date."

> **And he’d know. I don’t know how he knows, but he knows.**

Steve obliged, much to the entire table's laughter.

Against all odds, Steve was still smiling when he went into the Triskelion the next day for another post-Mandarin briefing.

"You look like you're in a good mood," Rumlow greeted, pushing maps around the table.

> **Dramatic irony. I wanted to end on a good note, but with a subtle reminder that – distant on the horizon though it may be – there would be danger and trouble to come. Because I’m just nice like that.**

Before Steve could answer, his phone chimed with a new message.

 _SCOTT MADE FIRST LINE!!!_ Stiles' text read.

"I am," Steve said aloud, sending back a congratulatory text.

All in all, Steve's first new year in the twenty-first century was looking up.

> **I wanted to make it look up specifically so it would hurt more once I finally brought it back down. >:)**


	17. 4.1 - Bodies in the Woods, Babies in the Tower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess I've been forgetting to do these for a while, whoops.

_So what's this I'm hearing about a dead body you and Scott found in the woods?_

****

> **What is their lives, that Steve doesn’t even feel any compunctions about texting this? Most people would at least save it for a phone call! :P**

****  


Steve sent that text just before going into yet another meeting about the latest wave of intelligence. It involved coordinating locations based on where they found various dead bodies, and what conditions those bodies were in. Many of them were American soldiers, and two of them even SHIELD agents.

The end result being he was already quite maudlin when he came out to a message from Stiles saying, _We practically caught her killer red handed!_

****

> **Stiles’ somewhat simplistic worldview at this point in the series.**

****  


_How do you know he killed her?_ Steve texted just before straddling his bike.

He'd just finished strapping on his helmet when Stiles chimed back, _Why else would he bury her in their backyard?_

That was a little strange. He actually leaned back a moment to type his response. _"Their"?_

_The killer's sister was the body,_ Stiles said. _He didn't report it to the police or anything like he should've. Just buried her in their backyard, right by their old house. Or what's left of it, anyway._

Weirder and weirder. _What do you mean by "what's left of it"?_

****

> **Stiles isn’t just being insensitive, here, by assuming a man could kill his own sister after all that. We as a society don’t like to think about it, but the reality is that the majority of the violence people experiences comes from friends and family – and more often than not, the more brutal the violence, the closer the person who committed it. The son of a cop (and of a dementia patient), Stiles doesn’t think twice about the idea of family members committing such horrific violence against each other. Steve – who may not have any siblings of his own, but remembers how fiercely Bucky and his sisters love each other – is extremely disturbed.**

****  


_It burned down years ago, most of their family died,_ Stiles texted back. _And they'd been there for a long time before that. Generations, I think. So you'd think a guy would want justice if someone or something killed his last relative. The only reason he wouldn't try to get it is because he already knows who it was. HIM._

Even over text, Stiles sounded so smug and sure. Steve wasn't sure why it rubbed him the wrong way so much, but he was self-aware enough to realize it probably had to do with the meeting he just came out of. After spending three hours explaining why no one's death's meant anything for sure, Stiles' certainty was almost galling. Enough so that he put the phone away to get on the road, the early evening wind chill a welcome respite from the stuffiness of the conference room.

****

> **Though Stiles’ smug surety is a factor, too.**

****  


It reminded him of when he first learned to ride a motorcycle. Howard was muttering under his breath about his modifications, Bucky was grumbling not-so-under his breath about how it was a deathtrap, and everyone else was laughing and cheering as Steve got the hang of it. Steve remembered it because later that day, they'd gotten reports of a burned out signals outpost. His ears still rang from the furious debates about whether it was actually the accident it looked like or some form of Nazi sabotage.

****

> **A lot of Steve’s life, in the military and with SHIELD, involves accepting that _something_ happened, but you have no idea what. This, combined with the familial relationship between the alleged-murderer and the victim that Stiles is texting about, is what throws Steve for a loop.**

****  


Steve was no stranger to grief, either, and the insane things it could drive one to do. He supposed Stiles wasn't as familiar with the mix of anger and grief, since his mother died of a disease. There was no justice needed, no vengeance to be had - or to be denied, as the case may be. When there was, or when it was there and just out of reach, survivors did crazy things. Steve had _done_ a crazy thing, one which catapulted him seventy years into the future, alive and well, instead of to Bucky's side where he belonged.

****

> **He invaded a mountain fortress and crashed a plane full of WMD’s into the ocean ice over his grief for Bucky. Steve may not have gone into that mission trying to die, but he wasn’t going to come out of it trying to live, either.**

****  


He parked his bike outside his apartment complex and made it indoors. He was pulling out the phone and ready to dial Stiles' number, prepared to talk to him about it. Then he realized it would involve _talking_ about it and froze for a second, wondering. Could he keep his voice calm through an explanation like this, when just thinking about it made his throat tighten up?

****

> **You don’t see it often in movies or TV because it just doesn’t translate well from reality to screen, but some of the most valuable forms of therapy are non-verbalized (re: not-spoken) communication methods. When you _do_ see, it’s usually as overly romanticized art therapy, but sometimes just being able to write something down instead of saying it out loud can be of tremendous help. Steve is kind of a quiet guy in the movies, and I tried to translate that here – Steve has a lot to say, but isn’t always quite sure how to say it. Being able to write it down (aka text it) instead of having to say it outloud (or worse, for the former ‘performing monkey’, try to _rehearse_ it), is a massive boon for Steve’s mental health.**

****  


Well, this was the 21st century. When one avenue of communication was too daunting, there was always another one available.

He pulled up the text messages, instead.

_When Bucky died,_ Steve began. _I was ready to burn HYDRA to the ground. Not because of their wrong-doing, not for the war, not for justice. Just for my friend. Grief alone makes you do weird things. But grief combined with vengeance, anger, terror? I invaded a fortified mountain base, jumped onto a moving plane loaded down with missiles meant to destroy every major American city on the eastern seaboard, and flew it straight into the ice...all for Bucky. People call it my greatest mission for justice, but I was just there for vengeance. I wasn't being brave for my country, I was being stupid so I could kill the bastard responsible for me losing the most important man in my life. And putting my plane down in the ice wasn't some noble sacrifice, because in that moment, I wasn't thinking about protecting people at all. I just wanted to see Bucky again._

****

> **Unbeknownst to Steve, Stiles is familiar with that level of grief. It’s just that for Stiles, it leads to a complete and total shut-down (Derek, too). Going crazy, acting out, etc. – those involve getting up and _doing_ something, which for some people is just not possible when they’re grieving. Steve and Scott act out where Derek and Stiles tend to just shut down.**

****  


Steve sent the message, then realized he'd forgotten how it was relevant to Stiles.

_I did all that for my best friend in the middle of a war,_ he typed out. _So honestly? Burying the remains of one of his last family members on ancestral land by their childhood home...that doesn't seem weird to me at all. After playing fast and loose with a plane full of weapons of mass destruction, that's almost tame by comparison._

****

> **Pretty much everything in the Teen Wolf universe is pretty tame once you compare it to the MCU.**

****  


Stiles didn't respond right away. That was fair - it was a lot to take in. Steve took a deep breath, then broke out the moonshine Clint had gotten him in the hopes that it could get Steve drunk. Steve was certainly willing to try.

It...almost worked.

For Steve, there was little difference between being drunk and alcohol poisoning.

****

> **This would actually explain the whole “Steve can’t get drunk” thing. Because if his metabolism is just four times faster than an average human’s, then it stands to reason that it just takes four times the alcohol to get him drunk – so why does canon insist that he _can’t_? It’s entirely possible that he technically is, but because his body is processing alcohol faster than his brain can feel the effects of intoxication.**

****  


Still, at least it kept his mind off of Bucky and his own suicidal last stand against the Red Skull.

****

> **Steve is self-aware enough to realize that he wouldn’t have cared whether or not he died, that day. Alive, dead, it wouldn’t have mattered – it was this hellish middle ground of sleeping for several generations that gets to him.**

****  


The next morning, Stiles' response said only, _The girl's death was ruled an animal attack, so they let her brother go._

Stiles made no mention of what Steve had said, and Steve wasn't sure if he was relieved or not.

****

> **Steve is self-aware, but not _that_ self-aware.**

****  


He didn't get any messages after that, so Steve had no compunctions about focusing on work.

For the most part, this meant running ass-first into a series of raids on budding terrorist cells. Everyone was trying to fill the power-vacuum in the wake of the Ten Rings collapse.

****

> **And according to the Marvel one-shot, All Hail the King, there’s a “real” Ten Rings and Mandarin out there, that doesn’t appreciate AIM and Killian stealing their thunder and tarnishing their reputation.**

****  


Between missions, he sat through more meetings with the curators for the Smithsonian exhibit. It was a combination of hilarious education about parts of history he'd never known about before, long arguments with historians who kept forgetting Steve was _there_ for the things they only ever read about, and long meetings in which Steve ended up zoning out when they were talking about things that had nothing to do with him or the Howling Commandos.

****

> **For my younger readers: take a moment, look around you, and think about how the world today is going to be described in history books seventy years from now. Imagine all the little things that people might not bother writing down, but were a part of history all the same. Imagine all biases and how they influence the way people around us are viewing events now, and imagine how these biases will perpetuate into the history books. Now, imagine yourself explaining all of this to your grand-nieces and grand-nephews in the future. Imagine what it’s going to feel like when your life is behind glass walls in a museum.**

****  


It had been a big war, after all.

****

> **If you had to take this entire presidential election and summarize it into just a page and a half in a sub-chapter in a textbook, how would you do it?**

****  


As it turned out, Steve should've watched his mouth a little more during those meetings.

He found that out the hard way a few nights after one of the last rounds of meetings he actually had to be there for.

"They asked for what?!" Steve asked, the broth of his experimental Thai soup splashing all over the stove as he dropped the stirring spoon in bewilderment.

****

> **Tom Yum soup, because that’s my favorite soup ever and I have no fucking clue how to actually make it.**

****  


"Bucky's funeral flag," Stiles said, enunciating every syllable over the phone. "Some representative from the Smithsonian called asking about it."

Steve swore, viciously enough to get Stiles snickering even as Steve leaned back against the fridge. "I'm sorry, Stiles," he said finally. "They asked me if I knew about it, and I said it was with the last descendant of the family. I thought that would be the end of it."

****

> **While Stiles already had a wee bit of a potty mouth before Steve came into his life, it grew exponentially worse afterwards.**

****  


"Nope," Stiles said, popping the 'p' a little. "So - what do you want to do with it?"

"Me?" Steve asked.

"It's your flag," Stiles said. Steve heard some pencil-scratching in the background, and wondered what homework Stiles was multi-tasking this conversation with. "I'm just keeping it safe for you."

"I meant for you to actually have it," Steve said. "Not - I was just..."

"Saying that?" Stiles said in good humor. "I kinda figured. But I still call it yours. Dad says the decision is between us."

"Where is it now?" Steve asked.

"I got one of those flag-display cases," Stiles said. "So it's in the living room, now, on top of one of the bookshelves. Can't see it much, though. Just as well - we don't have many people over, anyway." He paused. "And, uh, don't get mad, but I found some of Bucky's other stuff, too. Well, to be more exact, I guess one of my mom's aunts saved the medals and forgot to tell anyone about it? I've been going through a bunch of my mom's old stuff, after remembering the flag, and found a little box with them. So the case I got has a little section for medals, too. But I didn't tell the Smithsonian rep about it, so we only talked about the flag. I wanted to wait until you and I were actually talking, and not just texting, to tell you about them."

****

> **I usually imagine it as[this case](http://www.americanmadeforamericanheroes.com/rotate/veteran4.jpg), though I’m not always one for consistent mental images.**

Steve smiled. While it may not have been as much as the revered Captain America, Sergeant Barnes was still a war hero.

"Do you want to keep them?" Steve asked.

Stiles sighed. "Is it going to sound bad if I say I don't really care? I don't mind keeping it safe for you here, not at all. But...I never knew Bucky. I barely knew his sister, my grandma died when I was a toddler. I get that he's my family and all - but you're kind of more important to me than him."

****

> **In a very callous way, this was to drive home the element of chosen family. Steve isn’t Stiles’ family because of Bucky, he’s Stiles’ family because _Steve_. Stiles’ relation to the Barnes family was only a catalyst for meeting Steve – the rest of their relationship was built by themselves, and for themselves.**

****  


Steve stared at the fridge, stunned.

"...Steve?" Stiles said, sounding worried. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"It's okay," Steve said, scrubbing at his eyes in a way that had nothing to do with the spices laid out around him. "I - it's okay. I just - it's been a long time since I've had someone who...even when the Barnes took me in, I was still Bucky's - Bucky's friend, you know? Bucky was always more important to them than me. So it's...it's been a long time since I was more important to a family member than Bucky." He fiddled with the stirring spoon. "Not since my mom, really."

****

> **Mrs. Barnes loved Steve dearly, and took him into her home when he had no where else to go (and stopped being stubborn about trying to live on his own). However, Steve was there because of his friendship with Bucky – and he was still an outsider encroaching on a family that wasn’t his. Bucky was everything to him, but Steve wasn’t everything to Bucky, or to anyone else once his mother died.**

****  


Stiles took in a sharp breath. "I'm sor-"

"It's okay," Steve said, using his calmest voice possible before Stiles got a panic attack. "It's not bad. Just weird, that's all." Part of him felt like he should be offended on Bucky's behalf. The rest of him pointed out there was merit in Stiles' words. Even Stiles' mother had never met Bucky. Stiles' grandmother had died before he was old enough to know _her_ , let alone know her enough to feel kinship to a man seventy years dead.

"The parts of Bucky I cared about," Steve said, twining his fingers in the chain of the dogtags and peering around the doorway to look at his giant sketch of Bucky. "I have. That flag, those medals - that's not for or about Bucky. That's about Bucky's death, and for his family. So if you don't want to keep it..."

Stiles huffed humorlessly. The pencil-scratching resumed while Steve went back to stirring his soup.

"Are they paying for it?" Steve asked after a while of comfortable silence, filled only with the sound of sloshing broth and Stiles' writing.

"It would depend," Stiles said. "Mostly, they were asking for it as a kind of permanent loan thing? So, like, they'd have it, but if we ever asked for it back for whatever reason, they'd give it back. And as long as it's there, if it's on loan, we might be able to get a charitable tax write-off or something. Not a big one, but it might be more helpful in the long run because it would be recurring every year it's there, and not a one-time write off for donating it permanently. Or a one-time profit for them buying it. Which they also offered, but they're not offering too much for it. Either way, they'll give us an all-expenses paid trip to D.C. to, and I quote, 'escort' the flag there."

****

> **While certain types of donations can be written off on your taxes, I have no idea if donating something to the Smithsonian would count, and I’m actually pretty sure it _can’t_ be written off as a recurring write-off – if it’s on loan, then the Stilinski family would still own it, so it’s not really a donation and doesn’t get a write-off. Conversely, if they do donate it, it’s a one-time tax deduction, and they would no longer own it – the Smithsonian would. I only included this as very shallow world-building/very, _very_ pre-emptive handwaving for something that’s going to happen…kinda far into the future of this fic series. ;)**

****  


Steve laughed. "Makes sense. If you two come over here, you can finally see my place."

"Sounds good," Stiles said. "But on the topic of old crap - I also found a comic book which I think you might've signed?"

Steve burst out laughing. "I remember that!"

"Is there a story behind it?" Stiles asked.

"Somewhat," Steve said. "Long story short, I told Bucky not to antagonize the USO spin-doctors, and he didn't listen to me."

"Is that why he's always a kid in tights?" Stiles asked, already laughing.

"Yup," Steve said, nodding as he picked up the ladle to start working on his soup again. "He was fucking pissed when we got the first complimentary copy. This was right around the time I was getting famous for being a war hero, not just as a character. So I signed a copy and sent it back to his sisters as a joke." Steve paused. "I'm actually surprised that wasn't sold."

****

> **My way of reconciling comics Bucky with movie Bucky. Though fun fact, the Bucky of the movies is actually a conglomeration of two different characters: the actual Bucky Barnes, who Steve only met in the military after becoming Captain America, and Steve’s actual childhood best friend and ‘defender’, Arnie Roth – who was one of the first openly gay characters in comic book history. He’d been a distinguished sailor (Navy) in WWII. All the way back in the 1980’s, at the height of AIDS hysteria, the Captain America comic-book gave us Steve’s childhood best friend, who readers met when Steve mounted a rescue mission to save Arnie’s boyfriend, Michael, who’d been kidnapped by the villains.**

****  


"I think they just forgot about it," Stiles said, with a tone of second-hand apology. "I didn't even know this stuff was there until I went looking for anything of Bucky's. I found those medals, the comic book, and some old newsboy hats."

"I definitely remember those," Steve said quietly. Just the mention of them made Steve feel the ghost of a familiar, gentle pressure on his head. "Let me guess, one tan-ish and one dark brown? But otherwise identical?"

"Yup," Stiles said. "Were they his or yours?"

"The lighter, tan one was his, the dark-brown one was mine," Steve said. "His ma found them in some two-for-one sale, so she got one for each of us. We wore them all the time. The first time Bucky shipped out, he gave his sisters his hat and told them to take care of it for him until he came back. I did the same after becoming Captain America."

****

> **I’m actually not sure if “two for one” sales were a thing, yet, back in the Great Depression. Damn, I probably should’ve looked into this. Uh, if it isn’t, then just pretend Steve is using modern terminology to explain shit to Stiles, even if it wasn’t the most accurate description of actual events/circumstances.**

****  


"...so giving them the hats was the last time you ever saw them?" Stiles asked.

Steve paused in his stirring, realizing the painful truth of that.

"Yes," Steve admitted.

****

> **Perceptive Stiles is perceptive. >:)**

****  


"Then I'm definitely not giving those away," Stiles said. Steve heard what sounded like Stiles leaning back in his chair, creaking in finality with his pronouncement. "They're just newsboy hats, I doubt the Smithsonian will care, anyway. I'll send them to you."

"If you want to wear them, keep them," Steve said. "But otherwise, let the museum have it. They're not exactly fashionable, today, and..." Steve sighed. "I don't think I could bring myself to wear either of those, again, now that Bucky's dead."

****

> **Except, of course, the one time I had him wear it on the way to the museum. Whoops.**

****  


"I'll..." Stiles paused. "I don't even know, dude. Like, if I were visiting this museum and seeing this about someone else's family, I would be full of feels, so I get why it could be important. I'm just not sure if I want to share those feels with the whole world or if we should keep it to ourselves."

"...feels?" Steve asked, knowing he was deflecting and not caring.

"Tumblr slang," Stiles answered immediately. "For a strong burst of emotion. Often compared to a gut-punch."

"What's Tumblr?" Steve asked.

****

> **I wish I’d phrased this as, “What the hell is a Tumblr?”, to better reflect the “what the hell is a Stiles?” gag from Teen Wolf.**

****  


The conversation trailed off to lighter topics after that. Stiles recounted Scott's latest antics over that girl he's obsessed with, and Steve told him about Clint's latest rant about how disgusting infancy could get.

****

> **Though admittedly, I’m not sure there were much antics to be had, since this is still around the very first episode or two of Teen Wolf.**

****  


It was a quiet few days, after that.

Steve and Stiles ended up deciding to just give everything to the Smithsonian on a permanent loan. The Stilinskis would get a tax write-off for it, and now the museum was not only including the flag in their exhibit, but creating an entire new section just for families of soldiers in WWII, using Bucky's family - and the objects given to them - as an example.

****

> **The Howling Commandos exhibit we saw in Captain America 2 had likely been in development by the Smithsonian since the Battle of New York.**

****  


The Stilinskis would be coming over with the flag, medals, comic book, and hats in about two months. It was originally going to be one month, but Steve asked to have it pushed back by another so that the Stilinskis could be here during the fancy dinner being held by the Mayor of New York to commemorate the non-Avengers heroes of New York - the national guardsmen, city servicemen, and civilians who died in the Chitauri invasion. The "actual" Heroes of the New York were of course invited, along with their families.

Steve had planned on going by himself, but Tony - who was helping the mayor hold this dinner - pestered Steve until he caved and invited the Stilinskis.

****

> **In retrospect, I can’t believe I _forgot_ the mayor/to mention the mayor during the actual dinner scenes in the fic. o.O**

****  


"I was just going to go with Nat," Steve said over the phone. "She...doesn't really have any family."

"She has Clint's family, apparently," Tony said. "There's a reason I call them the Assassin Twins, not Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

"Who?"

That turned into a remote movie night. They would stream the same movie on different TVs several hundred miles away from each other, video call in front of them to heckle each other about the film. Half an hour into the film, Nat broke into Steve's apartment - for a given value of breaking and entering when he opened the window for her - and joined them. Everyone insulted how impossible some parts of the movie were and how understated the rest was. They kept doing so for another movie about sorta-supersoldiers, which got ten times funnier when they all realized the main character looked like Clint.

****

> **Jeremy Renner, the actor who played Clint, also played a low-key “supersoldier”/super-spy (a combination of Nat and Steve, in a way) in the Bourne Legacy. ;)**

****  


After that, Steve had a wholly unremarkable week and a half. He didn't have to do any field work. He just confirmed things in meetings, trained in new combat styles, and tried a few more recipes that Bruce sent him. The last few days were turning into a good week. He was starting to feel confident enough to take Tony's suggestion of going out to a bar or a club and socialize, more.

Granted, Tony had no idea just what kinds of bars Steve was interested in, but still. Steve was starting to feel good, feel settled, feel like he could really enjoy the future-

One article in his daily newsfeed changed all that.

****

> **I’m curious, did anyone have a moment of wondering what this was about, before I explained who/what it was a few lines down? If so, what did you first think this was going to be?**

****  


It wasn't anything ground-breaking, not for anyone at work or anywhere else he knew. It wasn't even news, so much as an opinion article on a slow news day about something most people had known about for a long time.

Only Steve hadn't known about it.

He read with sheer bewilderment, then clicked the Related Links and researched the names and nearly crushed his laptop in fury as he read and watched and listened-

He texted Stiles the link and said, _I am seriously reconsidering my policy of never calling a woman a bitch._

****

> **Remember when Stiles snapped, “I’m reconsidering my policy of never hitting a girl” at Lydia’s wolfsbane’d birthday party in Season 2? Yeah, he got that from Steve. :P**

****  


Pocketing his phone, he did his best not to think about it on his drive to the Triskelion. He went through the entire meeting with the CIA - complete with jurisdictional slapfighting and a few cracks about their building having two more sides than SHIELD's - without even pulling out his phone to check the time.

He came out of the meeting, went to the quietest breakroom on this floor for lunch, and saw Stiles' response - a simple, _The anti-vaxxer lady???_

Pursing his lips, Steve said, _I HAD half the diseases you can vaccinate against, these days. It's like these people WANT children to suffer._

****

> **Here’s the funny thing. This scene was inspired by[this comic](http://nyxelestia.tumblr.com/post/149823547625/aces-away-marigreste-athenadark) – but despite the fact my scene is nothing like that comic, I’ve had several people send me that comic and say that it reminds them of this scene.**

Stiles actually called him and said, "What if Captain America made a statement telling people to vaccinate their kids?"

Steve sighed. "I want to. But there are lots of rules about how I can get involved in politics and political issues - which mostly boils down to 'don't'. Because preventing children from getting horrible diseases is considered a political issue, now."

****

> **Though actually, since the CDC (a federal agency) advocates vaccinating kids, most likely Steve could absolutely start a “vaccinate your kids” campaign with little government worry. Granted, it would also be a clear indicator that Steve/Captain America was getting involved in ‘politics’, and thus opens up Steve to an even bigger door of hurt, but that’s a separate issue from military rules on political support while in service or whatever.**

****  


"Yeah," Stiles said, sounding apologetic. He got that way when he felt like he had to apologize for the 21st century. "That's kind of literally all it is. It originally had a legit standing but even after it didn't, the political machine took over and kept it going."

"There's a legitimate reason for making children vulnerable to diseases?" Steve said, unwrapping the sandwich he brought for lunch.

"It started back when there was a panic where people thought vaccines caused autism," Stiles said. Steve realized he could hear voices in the background. Double-checking the clock, he realized Stiles just got out of class.

"Do they?" Steve asked. Because if people were choosing between polio and autism, then maybe there would be at least some sense-

****

> **If you survived polio, then you’re looking at a lifetime of physical disability vs a lifetime of neurological disability if vaccines actually caused autism – that “if” being the keyword, there, because polio can actually kill you; autism can’t, even if it were caused by vaccines (though all evidence thus far suggests it isn’t).**

****  


"No," Stiles said. "There was a grand total of one study correlating autism and vaccination, and it was later retracted because it turned out to be kind of a crappy study. But by then, it was too late. A lot of people first protested against vaccines because they didn't want their kids getting autism, said measles was easier to recover from than autism, blah blah blah. It took a while for people to realize the autism thing was bullshit, and then they just turned into other excuses - like saying there's mercury in vaccines, saying preservatives are bad, and various general opposition to chemicals and things that aren't 'natural'."

Steve grunted in disgust as he swallowed a bite of his sandwich.

"Yeah," Stiles said. "Right now I think it's a government protest type thing? Like, people don't like vaccines because they're state-mandated. If you want to send your kid to school, they have to get vaccines, and that's government overreach."

****

> **I didn’t expect this to be so relevant in the 2016 Presidential election. D:**

****  


"Because sending your kid to a state-funded school for free isn't?" Steve asked sardonically, and Stiles burst out laughing.

"Yeah," he agreed. "It'll turn into something else eventually."

Steve sighed, and reached into his pocket to palm the inhaler. "You know, I used to read science fiction about futures where people were free of disease. Then I woke up in the future, and we're so many steps closer to that world...and then it turns out people are fighting against it."

"People are stupid," Stiles said. "A person is smart, people are stupid."

Steve smiled. "That's a good way of describing humanity."

"Full disclosure, that's not mine," Stiles said. "It's a paraphrased quote from a sci-fi comedy, called Men in Black. It's a good movie, you'd like it."

****

> **Men In Black revolves around hiding alien presence on Earth from humans – much like SHIELD does in real life. ;)**

****  


"I'll look into it," Steve said, checking the clock and trying to remember when he was supposed to be back at the meeting room. "What are you going to be up to for the day?"

"Teaching Scott how to bowl," Stiles deadpanned.

"Bowl?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Stiles said. "The dumbass got stuck going on a double-date, him and Allison with Lydia and Jackson. And he told them he's good at bowling."

"Is he?"

"Not at all."

Steve laughed. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Stiles said. "I think I'll need it."

****

> **It was a lot harder than I expected it to be, to mention what’s going on in Stiles’ life (and thus anchor his and Steve’s storylines/timelines together), without drawing too much attention to it or otherwise making it too obvious.**

****  


Wishing him one final goodbye, Steve hung up and turned back to his sandwich. He tried to forget that some people in the world thought making kids suffer through innumerable infectious diseases was a good idea.

****

> **You and me both, Steve.**

****  


That night, he distracted himself by watching the movie Stiles was talking about, which turned out to be a whole trilogy. Steve called Nat, and she came halfway into the second movie. When Steve told her how much Agent K reminded him of Col. Phillips, she stole half his cheddar puffs to distract him from his memories.

****

> **Fun fact: Tommy Lee Jones, the guy who played Agent K in Men In Black, also played Colonel Phillips in Captain America 1.**

****  


For the next few days, Steve focused on avoiding some bureaucratic squabble as he chimed in on his reports about the last incursion into Latveria. Fury looked one step away from throwing the visiting CIA agents off the rooftop, he was that pissed.

There were, thankfully, other distractions to be had.

Despite how much everyone seemed to hate the idea, SHIELD was switching over to some new computer system for 'gathering, processing, and managing audiovisual information', which was just brass talk for a new program to handle pictures and videos. Steve was almost relieved to have to attend a training seminar for it, mostly because it would be a reprieve from the shitstorm. The jurisdiction slapfight barely touched the Manhattan office, and that alone made the trip worth it.

****

> **If you’ve ever worked in a company or institution for longer than two years, you’ve probably had to deal with an overhaul in their computer system at least once. I swear to god, these things get worse and worse every time. -_-**

****  


Even the bad memories of first waking up there in this new century weren't enough to keep him away.

As an unexpected bonus, he even got to meet Clint's kids.

****

> **One of the core flaws of the MCU is the fact that we’re often told that the team is tight-knit or emotionally connected, yet we aren’t shown it. The Steve/Tony divide of Civil War was only able to devastate everyone so much in the comics because they had been so close, before. In the movies, not only do we not have nearly that much history between Steve and Tony to be able to make a conflict between them have the same kind of emotional impact, the whole team isn’t really shown to be that strong beforehand – as we see when this supposedly tight team doesn’t even know that Clint has a family until Age of Ultron. Introducing Clint’s family this early was my way of rectifying that, of really making the Avengers a tight-knit team that is hard to break apart (and thus, once someone finally manages to do that, make it all the more devastating).**

****  


Clint's...wife? Ex-wife? Girlfriend? Whatever, Laura was in New York for some internal biology conference SHIELD was hosting. When she and Clint were both caught up with whatever SHIELD saddled them with, Bruce watched the kids at Stark Tower.

****

> **No lie, I briefly considered making “Laura” actually be Laura Hale, but that would’ve been a little too contrived, and I didn’t really want the story to get overtaken by Clint dealing with Laura’s death along with Derek.**

****  


"Birdbrain does this on purpose," Tony confided to Steve in a low voice. In Bruce's apartment, just below Tony's various housing floors, they both leaned back against the counter-top of the kitchen, sipping at marshmallow-laden hot-chocolate. In the living room, Bruce talked Clint's oldest kid, Callum, through a chapter book the boy had to read for school.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked. His gaze drifted over to where the girl, Louisa, was playing something on one of those hand-held video-game consoles.

****

> **I used the names “Callum” and “Louisa” because in the comic books where Clint had the three kids (the Ultimate comics), his oldest two kids were boys named Callum and Luis.**

****  


"Bruce wants kids, and can't have 'em," Tony said. "And Clint knows this. So he gets Bruce to babysit his kids as often as possible. Bruce can't have children, but until he can, this is the next best thing."

"Huh," Steve said, blinking. "I thought..."

"Thought what?" Tony asked.

Steve took a sip of his hot-chocolate. Since Bruce had made it for the kids, it had a bit more milk than any of them would prefer, but it was wonderfully off-set by the marshmallows.

"Clint may be cleared for duty," Steve said. "But doesn't always...he still doubts himself. That's what I thought it was about."

Tony huffed, looking down at his chest. The blue glow wasn't there anymore. Tony kept it hidden with a special, skin-toned cover, these days. But if even Steve still occasionally expected to see it, he couldn't imagine how Tony was adjusting.

****

> **I really hated the way the arc reactor was removed at the end of Iron Man 3, because I felt like it really undermined Tony’s central conflict in Iron Man 2. So I kept the arc reactor in, but Tony just covers up the glow now because reasons.**

****  


"I know the feeling," he murmured.

Steve opened his mouth, but right then the baby started crying. Bruce immediately stood up, weaving around the coffee table and going to the blanketed area on the floor where Nathaniel was bawling at the top of his tiny little lungs.

****

> **Laura’s pregnancy in Age of Ultron was only really there to make her seem more maternal without developing her character, and to give Clint a baby to name after Pietro, after the events of Age of Ultron. Since I do get to develop Laura’s character and I hate people naming kids/characters after dead characters because of singular actions, those reasons were irrelevant, and the benefits of Clint bogarting a baby around in this fic outweighed any benefits for Nathaniel being born around his canonical time. Besides, now this means baby Nate will be a toddler during later MCU events. >:)**

****  


Bruce picked him up, sniffing at his diaper and then, apparently not smelling anything amiss, gathered the baby close to his chest and tried to sooth it.

****

> **I should’ve said “him”, not “it”. Whoops.**

****  


Over his shoulder, he told Callum to take a break as he meandered over to Steve and Tony, gently bouncing the baby in his arms.

"Clean diaper," Bruce said, the baby's cries already starting to trail off. "Just fed him and burped him - not sure what's wrong."

Steve smiled, amused. "I think the little guy just wanted someone to hold him."

"Those tears were alligator tears," Tony agreed, smirking as the baby grew quieter and quieter, burbling in Bruce's arms.

"Is that what you were doing?" Bruce cooed at the baby in his arms. "Manipulating me into picking you up?"

"They can do that," Tony said, and Steve nodded in agreement. He remembered Bucky's youngest sister, Anna, in her infancy.

****

> **They can! Well, granted, I was pretty vague about how old, exactly, baby Nate was. But babies start[fake crying and pretend laughing](http://www.cracked.com/article_18404_6-shockingly-evil-things-babies-are-capable-of.html) for attention as young as _six months old_.**

****  


Bruce snorted. "Not even half a year old and you're already taking after your namesake," he murmured, sounding more amused than anything else. "Clint chose well."

"Nat'll be gratified to hear that," Steve said. He pulled out his phone to tell her just how much of a bad influence she already was on her godson. Bruce went and sat back down next to Callum, resuming the homework help with Nathaniel in his lap.

"I wonder how he does it," Steve asked, after a while.

"Hm?" Tony asked, looking up from his phone. "How who does what?"

Steve jerked his chin over at Bruce. "I don't...if I had a little taste of something I wanted so badly...it hurts."

"You sound like you're speaking from experience," Tony said.

Steve swallowed.

"I went to see Peggy, just before coming up here," he said. "We sit and talk, rib each other and watch stupid movies and...and then it'll be something. She'll start coughing, or she'll fall asleep mid-sentence, or she'll be surprised to see me. And- it hurts. It's like every time, I almost have her again, and then I lose her."

****

> **Peggy’s dementia in Captain America 2 seemed a little recent. The look on Steve’s face was absolutely devastated, which was perfectly understandable under the circumstances…but at the same time, there is only so many times you can see someone go through that before you start shutting down under compassion fatigue, and you’re just numb to that devastation. So I figured that while Peggy’s mental state had probably been degrading for quite some time, that severity that we saw in the movie was relatively recent (“relatively” meaning “like a year” instead of “like two years”).**

****  


"And yet," Tony pointed out. "You still keep going back."

Steve blinked, looking down at the marshmallows melting into his hot-chocolate.

He hadn't thought of it that way.

The rest of Steve's trip was largely uneventful. He learned the new system with ease, in between shooting the breeze with Bruce, Tony, and Pepper. The latter two were conniving to get Bruce back in touch with his girlfriend and with his cousin, a lawyer who he'd once been close to. Steve promised to lend his assistance as a potential Hulk wrangler when they got the ball rolling.

****

> **If you put Steve in front of a brand new computer system alongside several other people who’ve never encountered it before, I suspect he would actually learn new things faster. Less older computer programs/baggage clogging up his perceptions, and he’s had to make far greater leaps of adaptation than most people have ever had to cope with in their lives.**

****  


The day after Steve got back to D.C., he got a picture texted to him with a message saying, _So how's your day been?_

Steve opened the picture, and frowned when he saw it was a picture Stiles took of himself in a mirror, focusing on a nasty bruise on his arm.

_Are you okay?_ Steve asked on his way to the Triskelion.

_Yeah,_ Stiles texted back a few hours later. _But your self-defense instructors are MEAN._

_"My" self-defense instructors?_ Steve asked.

_The ones from SHIELD,_ Stiles texted back, and despite the fact Stiles couldn't see him, Steve nodded in understanding. No one really expected him to need it - or that it would help if he did - but Stiles had started self-defense lessons, being vulnerable just by virtue of being important to Steve. Stiles drove for a little under an hour to a small SHIELD office in San Francisco to learn what to do if someone ever tried to kidnap or hurt him. It was a standard offer for family and close associates of certain agents, if they were at risk for use as leverage. There were few at greater risk than the adoptive family of Captain America.

****

> **Totally, completely, and utterly made-up bullshit. :P**

****  


It was supposed to be only on weekends. Stiles, however, had struck it off with the instructor, a retired Marine, and finagled his way into crashing some weekday lessons normally only meant as precautionary measures for non-combative field agents. Given that Stiles was now under threat of kidnapping as leverage from two directions, instead of just one, the Sheriff was more than happy to foot the gas bill if it meant his son would be just that little bit safer.

Steve decided never to mention his quiet and polite request to the instructor to let Stiles learn from him more often. It was the least he could do for the last of Bucky's family.


	18. 4.2 - Uncle Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...how bad is it going to sound if I admit I kinda forgot about this author commentary?

A week later, Steve got a picture of a page of some kind of worksheet and a text saying, _Piget animam meam electiones._

> **This was literally a Google Translate product, which I figured would best reflect Stiles’ capability with Latin at this point. :P**

Before Steve could ask what that even meant, Stiles sent, _Translation: I regret my life choices._

Steve squinted at the worksheet. _Is that Latin?_

He got back a picture of a Latin textbook in response.

_Why Latin?_ Steve asked.

_Lydia was taking it,_ Stiles said. _Also, it's supposed to be a major boost in SATs, APs, and a lot of grad-school and professional school entrance exams._

Steve shook his head at the list of life-changing tests Stiles was looking at in his life for the next decade or so. Clint had...strong opinions, to say the least, about the education system in America as it stood today. Steve had been caught between more than one ranting conversation about it between him and Bruce, who also had strong opinions about modern education.

> **To those of us who grew up in the era of standardized testing, the amount of tests we have to take is normal. But there’s a reason why even most contemporary high school kids’ parents – letalone older parents, grandparents, etc. – are so shocked and worried about the number of important tests their kids have to take. On a related note: the PSAT is often ‘sold’ to kids as a pre-SAT, a literal ‘Practice’ SAT or just a measurement device or otherwise unimportant. I bought it, and basically dicked around on the test. I only found out later that your PSAT scores can actually be a way of getting important college scholarship money. Many kids would literally be unable to afford college without it. There’s a reason why everyone is freaking out about it so much in Teen Wolf. (Though also on that note, the PSAT is what you take in sophomore year. The kids should’ve been taking the actual SAT, which is what you take around the end of junior year and the beginning of senior year.)**

_Need some help?_ Steve asked.

_Do you know Latin?_ Stiles sent back.

_No, but I know someone who does._

Steve called Nat, and started out by asking her if she knew of any good books or websites or anything that could help his nephew learn Latin. She gave him a few suggestions, then added, "You can also just give him my phone number. The best way to learn a language is to practice using it."

> **This is very true. There’s a reason why so many people learn a language just from watching movies in it or something. “Immersion” is the most effective way to learn a language. It’s just a little more time-consuming than classes, and due to the way our brains are wired, we don’t “feel” progress via immersion the way we do with classes, which is why people shy away from it as an active language-learning method. (And for me, personally, I’m already way behind on my shows in English, forget trying to watch them again in another language. :P)**

"Really?" Steve asked, surprised. She was usually so protective of her private information.

"Really," she said. "I mean, I'm going to give you one of the shell-numbers I use that forwards things to me, but yeah. If he abuses it, I can just cancel that number, but from the way you talk about him, I don't think it'll happen."

"To be fair, it is _me_ talking about him," Steve said, somewhat bitterly.

"People confuse 'looking for the best in everyone' with 'only seeing the best in everyone'," Nat said. Then, softer, "Believe me, Steve, I know the difference."

> **Foreshadowing their Winter Soldier arc this far back is difficult, when I’m trying to keep it from being obvious.**

Steve swallowed around a lump in his throat, staring down at the apple he was eating in the SHIELD breakroom as he adjusted his grip on the phone.

"Thanks," he said finally. "I'll send him whatever shell-number you send. And thank you for helping him."

"No problem," Nat said. "Besides, my Latin's been getting rusty, anyway, so it'll be good for me to get some practice."

By the end of the day, Steve was able to send Stiles a number to contact Natasha.

He didn't actually tell Stiles who Nat was, only saying "a friend of mine who knows Latin, did some legal work once". However, Nat herself told him. He got a text from Stiles saying, _Did you seriously give me the Black Widow's phone number just so I could practice my Latin???_

Smiling and still making his way to the training room, Steve said, _No, I gave you the phone number to my friend who knows Latin. She just also happens to be the Black Widow, sometimes._

Stiles' stunned, _OH MY GOD_ , made his day.

He was still grinning as he strode into the large training room, a small but challenging obstacle course set-up in it already.

"You ready for this, Cap?" Rumlow asked.

> **Balancing out the fluff with the subtle, tiny reminders at what’s stewing beneath the surface. >:)**

Steve nodded, putting the phone away and peeling off his jacket, getting down to just his PT kit.

The training day was surprisingly productive. As much as Rumlow often rubbed him the wrong way, the man was a damn good soldier, which was a relief in an organization full of scientists and spies.

> **Which is part of why Steve seems to like/trust Rumlow so much, at first, in CA2 – and also why Rumlow’s betrayal stings so much, for him. Steve was feeling increasingly outcast, and Rumlow and the STRIKE team were like him. So for it to turn out they were exactly the opposite, that they were part of that which Captain America hated most? That must’ve destroyed Steve second only to, “Who the hell is Bucky?”**

Steve had a solid week full of training. Fury was taking advantage of the current lull in new terrorist activity and the inter-agency slapfight to get Steve even more up to date on all of today's combat certs.

It was also a week of relatively little contact between him and his friends and family. He wasn't avoiding anyone, exactly, so much as just getting so caught up in things that he didn't bother reaching out or responding much to anything not work-related.

If he were being honest with himself, that was a big part of the reason why he accepted Nat's invitation to come try some new sushi place with her.

"Is this a date?" he asked as they sat down.

> **I really wanted to develop Steve and Nat’s friendship, without it descending into UST or other heteronormative bullshit. I figured lampshading it was one of the better ways to go about it. :)**

Nat rolled her eyes. "No," she said. "Trust me, Steve, if I were trying to seduce you, you'd know."

"Oh, I dunno," Steve said, picking up the small menu and smiling at the family in the booth across from them. It looked like the father was giving some kind of history lesson, while a teenage girl groaned in theatrical exasperation and the mother smiled at her daughter's misery. "People have told me I'm rather dim about these things."

> **Kira long-sufferingly listening to another one of Mr. Yukimura’s history lessons. Or a lecture on how to cook good sushi, who knows with them.**

Nat chuckled. "No, Steve. This isn't a date, and I'm not trying to seduce you. There are far more efficient ways of manipulating you than seduction."

Steve laughed, and she continued, saying, "I just needed someone to come out with me. Besides, Tony tells me you were surprisingly receptive to sushi."

"I don't know why people are so convinced I'd hate sushi," Steve said.

"Because it's Japanese, and so foreign," Nat quipped. "You were at war with them."

Steve rolled his eyes. "The man who was like a father figure for me was German," Steve said. "He's the guy who _literally_ made Captain America."

> **I feel like people forget that a lot. Steve’s adoptive father figure was German, and one of his closest friends (Jim Morita from the Howling Commandos) was Japanese-American. Steve knows full well that a nation is not defined by their loudest assholes – especially as someone who grew up relentlessly bullied in America. Steve hates bullies everywhere, but he won’t assume everyone of a certain race, species, or nationality _is_ a bully just because of a loud minority.**

Slowly, Natasha smiled. "I understand," she said. "I'm pretty sure my first mentor I had was actually American, at a time when I was raised to believe America was the incarnation of evil on Earth."

Steve snorted. "Who was he?"

Here, Nat's face dimmed a little. "I'm not actually sure. They...brainwashed us, a lot. I don't remember most of my life."

"How would you even know that?" Steve asked.

Here, Nat shrugged. "My earliest childhood memories are from the early 1960's," she said. "Yet I don't exactly look like I'm over half a century old, do I?" Mutely, Steve shook his head, and she continued, saying, "I get flashes of memory. Impressions. My mentor was nicknamed the American. I think he may actually have been American, either a defector or a prisoner of war." She swallowed. "I'm pretty sure he was killed around the fall of the Soviet Union. Or at least, I never saw or heard of him again. And a man as skilled as he was - I can't imagine what else could've happened to him."

> **Pay no attention to the fanfic author flailing around in desperate handwaving behind the curtain.**

Steve pursed his lips. "I'm sorry."

Nat shrugged again. "It is what it is."

They turned their attention to the sushi. It honestly baffled Steve that everyone kept assuming he would hate it. He got yet another lesson on how to use chopsticks - he wasn't as smooth as the rest of his teammates were, but he was getting there - and went through an entire plate of mochi ice-cream with Nat.

Twice, he saw the woman from the other booth looking at him oddly. After the second time, Steve sighed and told Nat, "We may have company, soon."

> **Noshiko is a lot more perceptive than Ken or Kira. ;)**

Since her mouth was full of inari, she tilted her head in confusion.

"I think we may have been recognized," he said. "By fans, probably," he added at the look on her face.

She swallowed her bite. "Full honesty, or 'we get that a lot'?"

Now it was Steve's turn to frown in confusion.

"Hm?"

"It's what I do to deal with fans," she said. Smiling, her eyes widened and something about the shape of her mouth and angle of how she held up her head changed. Despite the complete lack of changed clothing, make-up, or posture, she was a different person. "Oh, no, I'm not the Black Widow, but thank you! I get that a lot, actually. If another person comes up to me like this, I might start working as a professional impersonator."

> **I’m pretty sure a lot of actual celebrities actually do this.**

Steve burst out laughing, and even she let out a few inelegant snorts. "That actually works?" he asked.

Nat nodded. "Every time, at least when it's just random bystanders or fans. It's easier for people to believe they've just run into an uncanny look-alike than to believe they've run into the actual Black Widow by accident."

In the end, either the woman also believed there was just an uncanny resemblance, or she didn't care, because she ultimately turned her attention back to her family and her meal, paying them no mind.

> **Noshiko knew full well who they were. She just didn’t care – she didn’t want to interrupt her own dinner, or intrude upon someone else’s.**

Only a few minutes later, as Steve and Nat were leaving, she laughed at something on her phone and tugged at Steve's sleeve to show him.

"Is that Scott?" he asked in surprise, seeing the video of the teenager doing two backflips in a row.

"Yup," she said. "He was actually serious about trying to learn the kind of stuff he saw me doing. It's...impressive dedication, to say the least." Here, Nat smirked. "He says I helped him finally get onto the lacrosse team."

"What does gymnastics have to do with lacrosse?"

"I have no idea," she said, while typing away at her phone.

"Wait," Steve asked. "'He' said?"

Nat smiled. "Stiles got sick of playing middle-man and gave me Scott's number to help him directly. And since Scott's girlfriend turned out to be a former gymnast, he's even more dedicated to learning some good moves." Her smile took on a sly edge as she added, " _Really_ dedicated."

> **One of my favorite Scallison scenes was that moment from early on in 3A, when they were getting a little competitive and starting to border on sparring. The intensity of their relationship in the first two seasons makes a lot more sense if you project this playful and competitive element onto it. :D**

Shaking his head, Steve lead them both to where Nat had parked her current car. She finished typing up her message with a muttered _watch that ankle_ and a cheerful tap to the screen.

Sometimes, Nat could be wise and capable far beyond her years - which made sense, now. Other times, she was just as much of a kid as Stiles and Scott were.

If Steve were being honest, sometimes he felt that way, too.

> **Steve is both nearly a century old, and only in his mid-twenties. Natasha is playful most of the time, yet she’s also a seasoned and veteran spy of several defections and organizations. Meanwhile, in Beacon Hills, the pack are still kids – but they’re kids who’ve been through so much, it gets pretty easy to forget that they are only kids.**


	19. 4.3 - GSW

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GSW is the most common shorthand for 'gunshot wound' in military and police vernacular.

Steve's eyebrows rose when he got a text from Stiles asking, _How do you treat your bullet wounds?_

> **In retrospect, I wonder if this confused any of the readers who haven’t seen Teen Wolf.**

Since he was at home, and it was late enough that Stiles was, too, he just called instead of texting back.

"What do you mean," Steve asked as soon as Stiles answered. "'How do I treat my bullet wounds'?"

"You heal fast," Stiles said. "So, like - how do you take care of it? And how do you anesthetize for it?"

Steve sat down his pencil on his sketch pad, staring out the window of his living room.

> **This definitely confused Steve, though.**

"What brought this on?" Steve asked, trying to keep the mild suspicion out of his voice.

"Stuff."

"Stiles," Steve demanded.

"I was looking stuff up," Stiles began, which Steve mentally translated to 'research wormhole'. "And I'm looking at this page about how metabolism rates affect painkillers and GSW treatments, and...you heal fast and you have an advanced metabolism, so I just started thinking that if you ever got shot..."

> **I also tried to imply that Steve and Stiles talk a lot, and that the story is only showing some of them. So Stiles goes on Wiki walks – and then tells Steve about them – often enough that Steve just assumes that’s what happened again, here.**

Steve sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You don't have to worry about me."

"Why?" Stiles demanded. "What do you do? How do you know it's nothing to worry about?"

Steve snorted.

"Steve!" Stiles cried out, sounding genuinely distressed.

"Sorry," Steve said. He supposed he shouldn't be so cavalier about these things. In all honesty, Stiles' reaction to the thought of him getting shot was a lot saner than his own. "Just - for a second there, you sounded like your grandmother, and Bucky."

> **Steve is a little too cavalier about his own health and safety. Stiles is…not.**

"...seriously?" Stiles asked, side-tracked.

> **Stiles’ distractibility is sometimes a boon for his loved ones. Sometimes.**

"Yup," Steve said, leaning back into the couch. "They were always the mother hens of the family, usually even more than Mrs. Barnes. Either one of them could nag more than Mrs. Barnes, Sarah, and Anna combined."

> **I didn’t want to force a direct lineage between Bucky and Stiles (re: I didn’t want to make Stiles Bucky’s actual grandson, since that would be very contrived). But, I did want to maintain a strong familial connection, so I try to imply that Bucky and Becky were the closest and most similar siblings as much as I could.**

"No wonder, if they had to deal with asthmatics getting prescribed cigarettes by their doctors," Stiles grumbled. Steve would never stop being amused at the teenager's horror at the idea of asthma cigarettes. "But I won't be distracted! How do you take care of them?"

Steve took a deep breath. It was probably violating one official secrecy act or another. But hell, Steve had the legal right to disclose his own medical information to whoever he wanted, especially his next of kin. This would be the fastest way to calm Stiles down.

> **On the one hand, an individual can disclose their medical information to whoever _they_ want. It’s everyone else who can’t disclose anything without that person’s permission. I could go on national television and outline my medical history in detail, but my doctor wouldn’t be able to so much as tell another doctor about a specific procedure without my consent. However, Steve presents a new complication: his body (and thus, his medical history) is not _just_ his – it’s the result of military scientific research, which means it’s very possible that his medical history is no longer solely up to him to disclose, because to disclose it in detail would mean disclosing classified military research or state secrets in detail.**

"Continuous double-dosing," Steve said. "It's a very strong drip, and there are supposed to be multiple IV bags involved. One paralytic, one sedative, and ethanol to help slow down my liver function and give them a better chance to work."

> **If Steve has a rapid metabolism, that shouldn’t mean no drugs or alcohol work on him eve, just that it takes a lot more of them and in a different dosage structure. He was being treated in some kind of hospital setting after the battle at the Triskelion in Captain America 2, so presumably there _is_ a way to sedate him, even with his advanced metabolism. On top of that, from the Teen Wolf side of things, we see ketamine used to sedate a kanima, and kanima venom paralyzing humans and werewolves pretty equally (the werewolves just recover from it faster).**

"So that keeps you unconscious during surgery?" Stiles asked.

"I haven't had surgery, yet," Steve said, taking his sketchbook and setting it on the coffee table. "At least, not in this time-period. I haven't been hurt that bad. That's the modern version of what the doctors had to do back in the war, once. By the time they got me back to the army hospital, I was already unconscious from bloodloss. And it wasn't just bullet-wounds - I was literally impaled, I had some rebar going through my gut. Thus far, in the 21st century, I've been...hurt. A few times. But it's easier to just use a local anesthetic or some kind of topical painkiller. Those are less affected by my metabolism, so the doctors have longer to work and I feel less of it."

> **Incidentally, Peggy Carter was stabbed by some rebar in her show, _Agent Carter_.**

"But there is a way for you to be treated without, like, trying to have surgery while conscious with no painkillers?" Stiles clarified.

"Yes, Stiles," Steve said, drawing out the answer and doing his best not to let it sound like a long-suffering sigh. "Why the sudden worry?"

> **Steve loves Stiles and all, but even he can get a little exasperated by him.**

"Nothing!" Stiles cried out.

Steve took a page from John's book and let the silence do the interrogation for him.

> **This is a lot more effective than people realize.**

Eventually, Stiles said, "I started researching how to treat gunshot wounds and then tried to figure out how to treat them on someone with an advanced metabolism since I actually know someone like that, and then I called you about it."

"Why were you looking up gunshot wounds in the first place?"

Steve didn't necessarily expect an answer. He knew how Stiles could start searching something completely unrelated and end up digging deep into the bowels of all that Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet had to offer.

So he was a little surprised when Stiles flippantly said, "In case Scott ever gets shot."

> **Stiles is still getting used to having yet another set of insane secrets and juggling what he can tell to whom.**

Steve frowned. "Why would Scott get shot?"

"Um..." A pause. "The Argents - his girlfriend is Allison Argent - sell firearms for a living. And there may have been some form of threatening speech at his dinner with them that Allison's Aunt Kate kind of shanghaied him into."

Steve laughed. "Wouldn't you just take him to the hospital, then?"

"Depends on how much he's willing to tell his mom," Stiles said.

Steve rolled his eyes, well aware of all the kinds of things a teenage boy would want to keep from his mother - especially if it were about a girl.

> **Steve, of course, still assumes they’re just normal teenage boys. Tack on some of the parochial/patriarchal norms of his own adolescence, and his first assumption is that Stiles is worried about Scott and Allison getting caught by her father in a ‘compromising situation’ and getting shot as a result.**

"I take it," Steve said. "That things are going well with the girl, then, if her father started threatening him?"

Stiles snorted. "Her Aunt Kate thought Scott stole something from her bags. Allison stopped them from strip-searching him by showing off a condom. Scott said her dad looked like he was going to murder him on the spot."

> **And this would just seem to confirm it that suspicion.**

Steve burst out laughing. "I'm surprised he made it out of there without getting pumped full of bullets, anyway."

"More like arrows," Stiles drawled.

"Arrows?"

"Allison does archery," Stiles clarified. "And there may or may not be some family tendencies towards crossbows."

Steve chuckled again, idly drumming his fingers against the edge of the couch. "A Hawkeye fan and a Black Widow fan, dating each other. The team is going to love this."

> **They totally keep each other in the loop about each other’s social lives, friends, and families. A bunch of teenagers’ love lives are like a live-action soap opera for them. :P**

"Actually," Stiles said, sounding amused. "She's an Iron Man fan. Or, well - her family are Tony Stark fans? Apparently, they happen to have a stockpile of his old weapons somewhere. Now that he's stopped making new ones, the ones left make a lot of bank. They've gotten rich from that or something. So, because they like Tony Stark so much, they're Iron Man fans by proxy."

Steve snorted. "They're going to love that even more. Or, well, Tony will." At least as long as Steve didn't tell him his old weapons were involved.

> **Though this does raise an interesting question. We know Stark Industries made high-end weapons systems like the Jericho missiles, and that Howard Stark used to make complex stuff for the SSR. But, he also made something as ‘simple’ as the shield, and Tony seemed to know how to handle guns pretty well even before he was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Did the Starks actually make ‘regular’ weapons like guns? That’s what I wrote into this story, but I’m not sure if that background is actually canon. They are based on Lockheed Martin here in the real world, so…**

"Do you guys get competitive about fans, a lot?" Stiles asked curiously.

"Not seriously," Steve said. He didn't want to admit just how complicated the matter actually was. The interaction between Nat and Tony's playful bantering, against Clint's guilt and Bruce's self-loathing. The way Thor was so disturbed when he learned about Norse Paganism in the month between the Battle of New York and getting Loki off the damn planet. The slew of people who loved the legend of Captain America instead of anything about Steve's actual work and achievements...

"But sometimes," Steve continued. "If it's all in good fun." Stiles didn't need to know that it rarely was.

> **The Avengers actually aren’t really big fans of having fans, for a long list of complicated reasons. But, they _do_ have fans, and they make the most of their current situations, and sometimes that means getting a little playful because you have to laugh if you don’t want to cry.**

Stiles chuckled. "Well, I'm your fan, obviously."

"You don't have to say that-"

"I know," Stiles said. "Thor is a close second, and entirely for vain and selfish reasons. But you are my fave Avenger, and you were even before you first came to my house."

Steve stared at the coffee table, and decided not to let the conversation get too deep.

"How are your reasons for liking Thor 'vain and selfish'?" Steve asked, in lieu of actually pursuing whether or not Stiles meant it.

"...um..."

A smile spread across Steve's face as he recognized that particular flavor of deflection.

"Would I be correct in assuming that it's for the reason most people would typically assume Scott is Nat's fan?"

Stiles spluttered a bit, then sighed.

"His arms, Steve!" Stiles whined.

> **Stiles totally has a thing for well-built guys with shoulders like boulders. Derek, Thor, that bodyguard outside of Calavera’s club in Mexico… :P**

Steve laughed. "If he ever comes back to Earth, I'll let him know."

"Oh my god," Stiles said with total indignation, before the sound of his flailing came to an abrupt halt. "Wait, 'back to Earth' - you mean he's _actually_ from another planet?"

"That depends on which scientist you ask," Steve said. "For whatever reason, no one can figure out if he's 'just' from another planet, or if he's from another dimension entirely."

"...Jesus," Stiles muttered. "Just when I think _my_ friends are weird."

> **Werewolves are absolutely insane, but still not nearly as insane as demi-gods from another planet entirely.**

Steve laughed. "For most of my life, I was always the weirdest thing in the room. First because I was the sickest person on the block and shouldn't have even been alive. Then because I was the healthiest person in a hundred miles and should have been alive even less. Now, with the Avengers, I'm almost one of the most normal ones on the team. But we're still the weirdest people in any city we're in."

> **Which is why, later on, Steve is not so shocked by the discovery of the supernatural. It’s a little surprising, but not that weird compared to everything else he’s seen or been through.**

"You need to come back to Beacon Hills," Stiles said. "Then you'd definitely be one of the most normal people in town."

Steve chuckled, then looked at the time. "I've gotta go, and you've gotta finish your homework." Stiles snorted. "Yeah, I know," Steve continued. "But it's good practice for when you have to do stupid bullshit for work in the adult world."

"You sound like my dad," Stiles whined.

" _Good night._ "

"Fine!" Stiles sighed dramatically. "Good night."

> **He also makes the same mistake most older adults make of dismissing weird things teenagers say as ‘merely’ teen drama.**

After he hung up, Steve just clutched the phone to his chest and stared at the sketchbook on the coffee table, not seeing it. He tried not to remember the agony of being impaled and how sweet the relief of unconsciousness was. He tried not to remember how hard it was not to scream when he had to be awake for whatever the doctor or their medic was doing to him. And most of all, he tried not to remember what Bucky's face looked like every time Steve had been hurt in their shared life, together. Asthma or artillery, coughing up a lung or cutting out a bullet, Bucky had always been helpless and terrified.

Steve also did his absolute best not to imagine what Stiles would look like in the exact same position.

> **To the readers who _have_ seen Teen Wolf,  >:) !**


	20. 4.4 - Beacon Hills is WEIRD

Steve was no stranger to Stiles' ranting about his father's health. Diet, sleep, stress, even exercise. Anything that affected John's health (which was everything) came under Stiles' scrutiny. However, it was usually only a handful of texts a week, rarely even once a day.

After the fifth text from Stiles in two days about how his father was going to kill himself with cholesterol and stress, Steve called John and asked, "Is everything okay?"

> **The Sheriff’s tendency to comfort-eat is forever at war with Stiles’ obsession with his health.**

"Yeah," John said, voice a little staticky. Steve took a moment to berate himself for that thought - he was getting spoiled. Barely a year into the future and he was already getting irritated by the low quality of a phone call that would've been impossible in his day. For most of his life, the fastest communication one could hope for between Czechoslovakia and California would be a _very_ expensive telegram. He wouldn't have been able to physically hear John add, "Why do you ask?"

> **I added this to emphasize that while Steve is a ‘man out of time’, he isn’t set in stone, and he is adaptable. Humans are remarkably adaptable and quick to learn, and Steve has demonstrated himself to be particularly so. He grew up in an era before mobile telephones and Internet, but that doesn’t mean he can’t learn to use that technology now…and get used to it…and then find aberrations to what he is _now_ accustomed to (even if it’s technically slightly closer to what he had/was used to _before_ ) harder to deal with.**

Steve shook himself out of his mental castigation and said, "Stiles has been more worried about your health than usual. I wanted to know if there was a genuine cause or if you just looked bad in front of a doctor again."

Across the table from Steve, Clint snorted while Natasha looked up curiously from her work tablet. On the other end of the SHIELD safe-house, two Russian SHIELD agents glanced at Steve, but otherwise seemed uninterested in his conversation, turning their attention to what looked like some soap opera on the TV.

> **I didn’t want this to be an “Avengers only” mission, and I wanted to emphasize that these three individuals were a part of something bigger.**

"Oh, not you too," John grumbled. Then he sighed. "I've had a lot of stress, lately, and Stiles sees it. That's all."

"Stress?" Steve said, frowning at his MRE chicken...thing. Whatever it was he was eating. "Everything okay?"

> **70 years and military food is still disgusting. Modern ones (“MREs” – Meals Ready to Eat) are like consuming blocks of salt and chasing them down with bags of liquefied sugar. Those things are more preservative than food.**

Clint deemed this conversation not gossip worthy, as he got up and went over to the box of MRE's to make his own meal. Military rations were better now than they were in Steve's day, but they were still pretty terrible.

"No," John said. Steve heard the sound of a familiar chair creaking, and realized John was in his office at the station. "We've got a serial killer on our hands."

"A serial killer?!" Steve asked, bewildered. Natasha stopped in the middle of unwrapping her protein bar to watch him. Even Clint glanced over, but otherwise focused on throwing away the heating pouch to open his...was that chili?

> **A serial killer is…interesting, but also not their problem. Beacon Hills problems seem very ‘big’ to us viewing the show, but are very small in the grand scheme of global security and international politics.**

"Yeah," John said. "And we have no leads, and nothing connecting the victims."

Steve swallowed. "Anything I can do to help?" he offered helplessly.

"Doubt it," John said. "We've got a state detective coming in, and I'm pretty sure half a dozen other agencies are keeping an eye on it, too." John sighed. "And to think, I thought it was over."

"What was over?" Steve asked.

"...this," John said. Steve couldn't see the man, but he could picture the helpless waving meant to indicate 'everything'. "This town's always been kind of weird, lots of weird crimes, but lately they've been weirder than normal. The last few years have been...I wouldn't say quiet, but at least not violent. Violence levels dropped a bit after I came into office, and I guess I was just..." John sighed. "Well, I guess I can see why my office has one of the highest turnover rates in California."

> **This is part worldbuilding, but also partially me trying to place Beacon Hills in a bigger context. So often, it’s established as like its own little world, with little to no reference or context outside of it – how else does it seem reasonable for a whole town to simply vanish without everyone noticing (S6)? Or for mass-murders and monstrous animals rampaging through town to be left up solely to the local police (S5)?**

"The Sheriff's office?" Steve questioned, confused.

"Beacon County Sheriff's Office," John specified. "We have the highest turnover rate after the 'big cities'. I'm starting to see why. Most counties, you predict how long they'll be in office based on terms, or the Sheriff gets elected late in their police career and just keeps working until retirement. Here? Well, we get weird spikes in crime with long periods of low-violence and low-crime in between. Pretty much guaranteed that you're out after two spikes, and more of my predecessors than not have left after one. Looks bad come election time, and..." John sighed. "It's incredibly stressful."

> **I did my best to imply these were supernatural conflicts, and that whenever Beacon Hills isn’t embroiled in one supernatural conflict or another, it’s generally a peaceful place.**

"Can you find the last Sheriff?" Steve asked. "Maybe he can help."

"She still works here," John said with good humor. "Part-time officer, mostly desk duties, but she helps where she can within the limits of age regulations for the job." Another sigh, another creak of the office chair. "We've just got to work on this as fast as possible to catch the person doing this."

> **IDK when I started the idea that the previous sheriff was a female cop, but fuck it, I’m rolling with it.**

"I'm sorry," Steve said. "I hope you catch him, soon."

"We all do," John said. The sound of a door opening, a voice, and then John saying, "But we still have to attend to all the usual bullshit in the meantime. Including drunk teenage vandals."

Steve chuckled. "Go get 'em, Sheriff."

"You too," John said.

> **There is a lot of overlap in what their jobs actually entail – both the good, and the bad.**

The phone made the end-call beep. Steve pocketed it with a frown as he mentally went over everything he'd read about the town before even setting foot in there. He pulled his own work tablet across the table from where he'd left it charging and started tapping at it.

Finally, he looked up to Natasha, who was peering over Steve's shoulder. "Do you know anything about Beacon Hills?"

"What's Beacon Hills?" Clint asked, plopping down with his bag of MRE chili between the two of them.

"It's that town that keeps driving geo-phys MASINT nuts," Natasha said, frowning at Steve's screen.

"Geophysical measurement intelligence?" Steve asked, confused. "What are they involved for?"

> **I’m kinda pulling jargon out of my ass for this. “MASINT” = “measurement intelligence” – basically, geographers, oceanographers, and everyone else who keeps tabs on the physical environment so best as to enable the military to exploit it. The “geophys”/geophysical part is mostly redundant, except to specify that this is _not_ including oceanography – this is only helpful when talking about ‘currents’.**

"Currents," Nat deadpanned. Steve raised an eyebrow, asking her to elaborate. "Geoelectric progressions, telluric currents, ley lines, whatever you want to call them," she said. Steve took another reluctant bite of his possibly-bisque. She read over Steve's shoulder, and managed to pick out the important things in seconds, relevance that Steve was still trying to parse through. "They're like currents of electricity running on certain frequencies, through the Earth. But Earth isn't exactly conducive to electricity. There's a ridiculously high concentration of these in the nature preserve just off of town. But whenever anyone actually goes there, they can't seem to find what's causing it. It's just a random clearing in the forest."

> **Yes, that random clearing in the forest is the Nemeton. I tried to imply that SHIELD actually _did_ find the right place, but either couldn’t see the tree-stump itself or just dismissed it (so they never even wrote it into the report).**

"Huh," Steve said, swallowing his bite and frowning at the newsfeed. "I was just chatting with the town Sheriff, and crime has taken a turn for the 'weirder than normal'."

"Weirder than normal?" Clint asked, raising an eyebrow and merrily munching his way through the dubious chili. "What the hell does that mean?"

"This town's always had a lot of weird crimes," Steve said. "Generally very low on crime, but when they do happen, they're in spikes and are just...downright bizarre." He shook his head. "And apparently SHIELD keeps track of things in the town?"

> **It’s very difficult to have SHIELD vaguely aware that something is not right with this town, but not fully aware of the details, either.**

"All of SHIELD or just MASINT?" Clint asked. "Because MASINT has eyes on all sorts of-"

"That's just it," Steve said. "If it were just MASINT or GEOINT, I wouldn't think twice on it. But OSINT is on it, too - except they don't seem to have a reason to be. A bit after SHIELD scientists started monitoring the town - I guess to try and figure out whatever's going on with that geoelectric energy - they also started monitoring pretty much every legal and law-enforcement channel in the area." He looked at Nat. "Any idea why?"

> **OSINT = Open-Source Intelligence. Basically, accumulating publically accessible information (news, police reports, bureaucratic information, agency disclosures, etc.) and then combing through it to find relevant information. This is the intelligence equivalent of a needle in the haystack, while at the same time also the most fruitful source of information – especially in the age of social media. You may not know exactly where the terrorist organization has set-up camp, but if a tiny village in the middle of nowhere suddenly sees an uptick in business and travel from mysterious or well-armed men, that might be a big clue.**

Nat was already tapping at her own tablet. "No," she said after a while, sounding as intrigued as Steve was bewildered. "There's almost no threatening activity there for SHIELD to care about."

"'Almost'?" Steve asked.

Nat skimmed some reports, then rolled her eyes. "Cyber traced some Rising Tide activity to Beacon Hills when it was still getting set up. But it got traced to some middle-school kid."

"One of the Rising Tide founders was a kid?" Steve asked incredulously.

> **Yes, this was Danny. I have a lot planned for Danny. >:)**

She shrugged. "Hard to tell. Even after he destroyed everything on his computer, it showed evidence of involvement. But the investigating agents decided that he was way too young to actually do anything himself and was just conned into taking the fall for someone else. They dropped the charges, let the local police deal with it. _They_ were big on youth rehabilitation, so the kid just had some community service, with restrictions and monitoring on his computer usage. Not very thorough ones, either." She huffed, looking at the screen. "Those guys are idiots who just didn't want to admit they got outsmarted by a teenager."

> **If anyone could’ve proven a connection between Danny and a hacking/cyber-terrorism organization, then he’d probably be in juvie until he was 18. This was my explanation for how/why he’s still in high school, despite very clear and very shady involvement with the Rising Tide.**

Steve snorted. "Don't kids usually know computers better than adults, anyway?"

Nat nodded with a grin, while Clint rolled his eyes.

"So no idea?" Steve said.

"Sounds like SHIELD's just watching _because_ it's weird," Clint said. "Normally we're the weird ones. Higher-ups don't like it when someone is weirder than us. We have the monopoly on weirdness-"

"Are you just trying to see how many times you can say 'weird'?" Nat asked, lips almost quirking up into a smile.

> **Yes.**

"Cut me some slack, I got shafted onto this mission just after Nate's cold cleared up," Clint grumbled, hiding his face in his chili. "I haven't had more than four hours of sleep a day in three weeks."

Steve snorted, then turned back to the website of the Beacon Bugle, the county's major newspaper.

> **I didn’t realized I’d used “Bugle” until afterwards. I don’t know whether or not I’ll connect this to the New York newspaper of a similar name from the Marvel comic-books. Maybe it’s a parent-company? Then again, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both have ‘The ___ Times’ in their names but are separate news organizations…**

"So there's a serial killer and nothing connecting the victims?" Nat asked.

"Nada," Clint said, leaning over to peer at Steve's tablet while talking to her over his shoulder. "Or at least they're not publicizing it. Right now, they're not even publishing any of the victims' names, to protect the security of an on-going investigation."

> **Whenever there is an on-going investigation, little to no information is disclosed to the public for a laundry list of reasons.**

"Want me to see if I can sweetalk some local SHIELD agents into trying to pick-up the case?" Nat asked. "They probably would, just by virtue of the fact the county is already under SHIELD monitoring. Even if it's passive monitoring."

Steve thought about how John would react to that, and shook his head. "Nah. This doesn't look like it's a SHIELD problem. Just...a problem."

"We don't handle 'just' problems," Clint agreed, sighing into his bag of chili. "Only the worst ones..." Here, he smirked at Natasha. "And only if they're weird."

> **At this point, SHIELD’s “jurisdiction” is to deal with security problems, especially scientifically related or global security issues. A small-town serial killer is simply not on their radar.**


	21. 4.5 - Stars and Stripes

Stars and Stripes knew how to cater to their demographic. Instead of any elaborate living room set-up, it was just two arm-chairs in a small and utilitarian room of neutral tones, a flag in the background between the two chairs that faced the camera in a triangle formation. The interviewer, Ms. Garcia, knew how to talk to soldiers, even if she never was one, herself. He supposed that was understandable - she was a retired war correspondent, after all.

> **Stars and Stripes is a military newspaper – in that it’s a newspaper intended for American military personnel and anyone close to them (i.e. army spouses and such). Obviously, anyone and everyone can and does subscribe to it, but it is not intended for civilians.**

He wasn't exactly enjoying this interview, or even relaxed in it. But compared to most of the publicity bullshit he had to deal with - god, sometimes it made him miss his USO days - this interview was a lot nicer and a lot less likely to result in Steve destroying gym equipment. Again.

> **Either Steve goes to a private gym, where he has his own entire allowance of gym equipment that he keeps blowing through…or, since he’s now working in D.C. instead of New York (and thus, working out of the Triskelion), someone in R &D gets to use Steve as a guinea pig for testing new gym equipment. Or maybe Tony does, who knows. :P**

Surprisingly, he even liked answering some of the questions. Things like how the military has changed since his day, but also how it's remained the same. There were some jokes about how military food was still awful. There was a lot of discussion about the differences in soldiers' perspectives of their army, their war, and their government.

And there were some more personal questions, too. Nothing invasive, but thoughts on today's pop culture, the public perception of the military, and even Steve's own perceptions about today's youth and entertainment.

"It's not nearly as bad as people expect me to find it," Steve answered honestly.

> **This may or may not be a slight jab at people who tend to write Steve as practically useless outside of combat situations in the 21st century. Boy learns fast – he went from pipsqueak to downing a plane of WMDs in what, 3 years? _2_? He became a hero with his first mission – how long did it take him to become a legend, after that?**

"Oh?" Ms. Garcia asked.

Steve smiled. "Well, it's like this. People are recommending a lot of music to me - everyone has their favorites, and they want me to like it. I listen to the recent stuff, pop music and rap and all the generations of rock music. I do form on-the-spot opinions."

He took a deep breath, and put on his most Captain America posture and voice he could manage while remaining seated. "I'm wary about the quality of music being played on the instruments - and sometimes the instruments themselves. I can't help but wonder what it is people can see - or rather, what they can hear - in this music. I think a lot of it just sounds like racket, the singing could use work, the lyrics seem either unoriginal or completely nonsensical."

He straightened his shoulders. "I worry about the state of the current generation, how their art will develop, how this music reflects their values. I worry about what they get up to with this music when people aren't looking. I worry about what kind of adults they'll grow into..."

Then Steve deflated, leaning back - almost flopping back - in his seat. "And then I remember my mother used to say the exact same things about the kind of music _I_ liked when I was a kid."

> **Every single generation had their music complained about by previous generations, only to turn around and do the same thing to the next generation. Steve’s generation’s music – jazz, swing, etc. – were absolutely criticized by their parents, which all of them promptly forgot come the post-WWII music boom, when all of them started complaining about rock music.**

Ms. Garcia burst out laughing, as did some of the production staff around them. Steve smiled, and then continued.

"In all honesty, I'm not worried," Steve said. "My parents' generation had a low opinion of our music and we turned out just fine. You guys call us the greatest generation. And near as I can tell, we didn't learn. A lot of my early introduction to rock music was how counter-culture it was, how the youth who listened to it were clearly destined for ruin. And then I heard about how some of those bands are now modern politicians' favorite musicians. Some rock band even had to ask one to stop playing their music at political conventions. Near as I can tell, every generation is told they are degrading art and culture because of what they like, and they turn out just fine."

> **In the immortal words of _Rage Against the Machine_ guitarist Tom Morello, about ranking conservative politician Paul Ryan citing this band as one of his favorites: _“Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades.”_**

He grinned. "Give it a couple decades. All the kids whose music you're insulting today are going to be turning around and doing the exact same thing to their kids."

Ms. Garcia was chuckling again. "My kids are about to become teenagers, so that's definitely something I'll keep in mind."

"People always have such low opinions of teenagers," Steve said, shaking his head ruefully. "But we do them a great disservice every time."

"Oh?" Ms. Garcia asked, seeming surprised. "Even today's teenagers?"

> **Ms. Garcia wasn’t surprised that today’s teenagers are _not_ worse than previous generations, but that Steve didn’t assume or believe it. She expected Steve to have the same opinions of teenagers that actual nonagenarians do.**

"Yes," Steve said. "Granted, every generation has a low opinion of the next generation's youth, but we don't look any less like fools every time."

"How does that apply to the youth of today?"

Steve parsed his answer in his head for a moment.

"What today's youth may or may not lack in doing physical work, they more than make up for it with the mental legwork," Steve said. "Half the people I knew, growing up, didn't even finish high school, and now more kids than not are going to college. I feel pretty confident in saying today's kids are going to be a lot smarter than their ancestors, individually and as a whole. And it's not just schoolwork, either."

> **Millenials are currently the most educated generation in human history. Unfortunately, our education outpaced our economy, hence why so many of us are underemployed or unemployed. Much of what we gained in education, we lost in practical training, which had ripple effects on our employment rates for our age group. :(**

"What else is there?" Ms. Garcia asked, doubtful but open. She was a damn-shrewd interviewer.

"Well..." Steve took a deep breath, trying to put his thoughts into words - what it was about Stiles that made him seem so old to Steve, when he wasn't acting so young. "I think, in many ways, it boils down to perception, and putting that perception into action."

Steve spared a moment, wondering how best to describe his sentiments without saying Stiles' name or pointing too directly at him.

> **Unfortunately, Steve underestimated just how dogged investigative journalists have to be, these days – and how _easy_ it is to find personal information dating back generations.**

"For the first half a year or so after I was defrosted," Steve said, measuring his words out in a slow and steady stream. "People would - assume things. Mostly, they assumed that when it came to things like food or music, I would only want to stick to older things, stuff I knew. Some assumed I either would want something new, or that I should try something new whether I wanted to or not. Dozens upon dozens of people - some of them even psychologists or veterans, themselves - and everyone kept assuming. People rarely asked me if I wanted something new or something I was used to. Out of all the people I met in the months before and after the Battle of New York, you want to know who was the first person to actually ask me?"

"Of course," Ms. Garcia said.

"A teenager," he said. She didn't try to hide her surprise, and Steve couldn't tell if it was acted or not. "My best friend and sergeant, Bucky Barnes - his family had practically adopted me after my own died. I'd always planned to come back to them after the war. When I went looking, the last living Barnes was Bucky's sister's grandson. He and his father - the relation was through his mother, who died a few years ago - invited me to stay for dinner, and they were ordering in." Steve took as deep a breath as he could manage without being obvious about it. "I remember that they had this big stack of take-out menus, most of which were to restaurants that would've been beyond my imagining as a kid. I said as much, and without even thinking about it, the teenager asked me if I wanted something new or something I was used to. Half a year in the 21st century and he was the first person to ask me that."

> **Steve was as vague as possible about Stiles. Even after that, he tried to imply that he only visited Stiles, and nothing more. What he didn’t expect was how journalists would be clamoring for a few words of even someone who ‘only’ got a passing visit from Captain America, if that visit included a conversation as personal as the one Steve talked about here.**

"Really?" she asked. "No one else asked you?"

"Not one," Steve said, shaking his head before continuing. "He's also the first one to show me how to learn things on my own, if that makes sense? I mean things like how to use Google to answer my questions about everything from history to technology to culture, how to tell apart reliable from unreliable sources, how to find new books and movies and music based on what I already liked, that sort of thing. Everyone was willing to tell me any answers I wanted, but he was the first one to show me how I could get those answers, myself."

> **As a long time tutor, there is a world of difference between showing someone the answer to something, and helping them find that answer on their own. Give a man a fish, he’ll be fed for the night, teach a man how to fish, and he’ll be fed for the rest of his life. ~~Unless the lake is polluted or over-fished and there are no more fish to be had, or he starves to death before finishing learning how to fish. I like that pithy quote, but I also believe it is incomplete in its traditional form.~~**

"Sounds like a bright kid," she said.

"He is," Steve said, recognizing a leading statement when he saw one and choosing to ignore it. "And it's not just him. I see so many people complaining about how kids online gripe about getting offended by everything and how they talk without ever doing anything. But when I actually read this stuff, they don't look like whiny kids to me."

> **This may or may not also be my jab at some of the attitudes expressed towards online social justice. The only difference between discourse now and discourse of generations prior is that now it’s up for public consumptions, whereas before it was limited predominantly to academic or civic environments. Strip that main difference – and the corollary impacts of that difference – away, and there’s nothing particularly new about it.**

He gave her and the camera his most disarming smile he could muster. Tony called it his Apple Pie Smile.

"They look like they're carrying on a long-standing tradition of sorting out your perceptions and priorities before actually taking them into the political field," Steve said. "And they do, if the amount of young people in every political protest I've seen are anything to go by. The only difference is the that dialogue which used to only happen behind closed doors of college classrooms is now being done by a wider-variety of people, and is available for public consumption. Otherwise, it's the same thing."

"That's a very progressive way of looking at it, Captain," Ms. Garcia said neutrally, still trying to get him to do most of the talking.

Steve nodded. "I like to think I'm a progressive person."

> **Steve is, definitely so by the standards of the time he grew up and spent most of his life in, but even somewhat by modern standards. For a variety of reasons, I have a hard time buying him as the super progressive uber-liberal fanfics often write him as, but he’d definitely be open-minded about things.**

The interview wound down less than half an hour after that.

The day after, Steve went with a team down to Iraq to rescue a bunch of SAS soldiers who weren't supposed to be in the area in the first place. It took a solid three days to extract them, and by the time Steve came back, cleaned up, and rested, the interview had gone viral.

> **This was one of the earlier hints of HYDRA being up to shady shenanigans – the SAS are British special forces, so if SHIELD – and international military-intelligence group – is the one sending in a rescue team for somewhere that the British special forces weren’t supposed to be in, in the first place? There could technically be some good reasons for that, but that is extremely unlikely.**

"Your down-to-earth attitude here is popular," Ms. Biswas, his PR manager, informed him over the phone. "Maybe you should pull out this particular mask more often."

Steve looked down at his tablet, taking in the incomprehensible statistics and the all-too-comprehensible comments from viewers. "I'll think about it."

Despite knowing this interview was dominating the media's consciousness during a slow news week, Steve was still surprised to see how deeply-reaching it was.

_Did you mention me in that interview with the military news-site?_ Stiles asked. Steve received the message just a bit before boarding the jet headed back home. _Because some reporters have started stalking me to ask for a comment._

> **Stiles probably sent Steve this right after trying to talk to Derek at the ruins of the Hale House and getting confronted by Christine Everhart.**

He felt his blood go cold at the thought, and asked, _Are you okay?_

_Yeah!_ Stiles immediately responded. _I don't mean creepy stalking, I just mean shit like waiting for me outside of school or following me and Scott through the woods. They're not like, harassing me yet, and my dad's made sure I know how to handle it if they do._

_As long as you're okay,_ Steve sent back. _I'm sorry, I didn't say your name and hoped that would be enough._

It was a long flight back home, especially since it actually landed in Virginia. By the time he landed, he got the response.

_I saw the interview, and dude, no, don't be sorry, mention away, I'm kind of...flattered? Honored? Whatever, it was an awesome way you mentioned me._

> **Stiles is both flattered and honored. I didn’t really include this in Talking Cure at the time, but this was one of his earlier clues as to just how much of an impact on Steve’s mental health he really has.**

Steve smiled, and sent back a picture of himself standing in front of the Army base that SHIELD was landing the jet in.

_I'm almost home,_ he sent, and grinned at all the thumbs-up symbols Stiles sent. _Go to bed,_ he added, because it was the middle of the night.

> **Snapchatting before the actual app for it got popular enough for Steve to bother learning about it. :D**

Stiles sent back a _:P_ , but nothing else, so hopefully he obliged.

Steve had nothing to do at the Triskelion for two days, and then it was more computer training. He was never going to be as smooth or easy with computers as anyone born in this generation, but Steve was getting the hang of himself, learning the basics of hacking and how to interpret instructions on digital intelligence.

> **People underestimate just how much technology changed in a few short years during WWII. The kinds of ‘updates’ and new waves of tech we might get every other year or so today was coming every few _months_ during WWII. Once Steve gets the hang of some underlying principles, keeping up with new changes would be a piece of cake for him. Things that are intuitive to those of us that grew up with computers wouldn’t be so for him, but he would learn very, _very_ fast.**

The least boring part of the week was also the most infuriating. Steve passed by a bunch of protesters on his way back home, and felt his blood boiling when he saw what they were chanting and demonstrating about.

Steve texted Stiles the picture of the protesters, especially the stupid 'Send Them Back!' signs.

_I can't believe this is still happening,_ he added.

_"Still"?_ Stiles texted back around Steve's coffee break.

Steve pursed his lips and texted back, _They said that shit to ME back in my day. People had a low opinion of the Irish, back then._

> **The Irish were the ‘lowest’ race one could be and still be considered white. They were referred to as ‘white niggers’, and up until WWII, not everyone _did_ consider them ‘white’ (as in part of the white racial majority of America).**

He finished up his reports and the entirely redundant post-mission equipment review, and by then he got his response from Stiles.

_I second-hand feel you, it said. Scott's like the most white-washed Chicano ever and he still gets that kind of crap said to his face._

> **Y’know, I can’t believe I forgot to include this, but Steve probably would’ve been surprised at Stiles casually calling his best friend Chicano. Today, it’s a pretty neutral term for Mexican-Americans, but back in Steve’s day, the term actually had some really negative connotations.**

Humanity never learned.

Steve, unfortunately, ruminated too long. One of the reporters covering the protest spotted him, and tried to get Captain America's attention. Steve turned away, as if he wasn't the person she was looking for. Hopefully this wouldn't end up all over social media networks or on the front page of anything important.

> **You bet your ass it did.**

Still, he told Stiles about it, who asked, _Do you know any Irish?_

_Irish what?_ Steve asked while making his way through town to get to the bodega where he tried to do as much of his grocery shopping as possible.

_Irish language,_ Stiles said. _You're supposed to give some kind of neutral, 'no comment' like answer when they ask you political questions, right? Well, you should do it in Irish! You would be complying with the rules, but I guarantee the Internet will spell out the protest for you._

_I'm pretty sure that's still very obviously taking a side in a political issue, which I'm not supposed to do as a serving officer,_ Steve said.

_I'm sorry,_ Stiles said, and Steve smiled. _That SUCKS._

_No worries. I'll see if I can get away with it,_ he texted. Then, as an afterthought, he added, _And English is actually my second language. Irish was my first._

_Holy shit, you should tell someone that,_ Stiles said. _Preferably while on national television._

> **Actually, for a variety of reasons, Irish even being a language Steve learned at all was monumentally unlikely, let alone Irish being his _first_ language. But I figure Sarah Rogers had to be a pretty remarkable woman to raise a remarkable man like Steve, and anyway I like the idea of political subversion actually being a long-standing family tradition from which Steve descends. Also, I’ve technically forgotten my own first language, so it’s possible – or even likely – that Steve actually learned Irish first, then forgot it or got rusty at it over time.**

Steve smiled. Ms. Biswas would kill him, but for as little political involvement he was supposed to have...well, he couldn't be held at fault for revealing some facts about his childhood, could he?

And hell, it's not like Steve hasn't disobeyed orders before. Legal technicalities have always been an American specialty, and Steve was supposed to be America personified. He wasn't above abusing them as much as possible.

He could probably sue someone for discrimination if anyone at SHIELD tried to stop him from answering questions in Irish or admitting what his first language actually was. He didn't know who or how, but Tony would be happy to help, he was sure of it.

> **You don’t get much more American than frivolous litigation.**

Still, he wasn't allowed to approach any of the protesters or news reporters about this, so he'd have to wait.

_I'll try to do that,_ Steve said. _Without being obvious about it._

_I will admit,_ Stiles texted back while Steve was deciding how much milk he should buy for the week. _Even knowing you, I didn't exactly expect you to be bilingual. You'll blow a bunch of nationalists' minds when they find out._

_Technically trilingual,_ Steve said, standing in the little coffee aisle. _I'm fluent in French. And Nat, Clint, and Tony are teaching me Russian, Arabic, and Japanese respectively. Bruce isn't actively teaching me anything, but I always seem to know another Bengali phrase every time I talk to him._

> **Matro ekti bhasha jotheshto noe!**

Steve made the rest of his little grocery run quickly - or at least the dry goods, saving the meat, produce, and bread for later. He knew that most people got all this stuff in one grocery store, these days. Most of the time, he could, too. But when he was already in a sour mood, the small bodegas were a surprising comfort, even if half the labels were in another language entirely (usually Spanish, which was almost its own language learning experience).

> **What we consider to be bodegas or convenience stores, would’ve been full-gamut grocery stores back in Steve’s day. Back then, before the wide range of preservatives we have now, it was far more common to get the various foods from different sources – i.e. meat from a butcher, bread from a bakery, etc. The process of getting all your food from one store is a very post-WWII idea.**

He paid for his wares, and as he carefully packed them into the bag, he asked the cashier, "How do you say 'have a good day' in Spanish?"

Alex - "Only my parents call me Alejandro" - seemed amused. He knew damn well who Steve was, but after the first two trips here, he didn't care. The boy had only seemed to notice once, when he asked Steve to autograph some old Captain America poster. For decades, it had hung up in the corner of the front wall of the store, halfway hidden. Even after Steve signed it, the poster stayed right where it had been for years, and the boy always greeted him as 'Steve' thereafter. Or Señor Steve, when he was being cheeky.

"If it's to someone like a boss or who you're trying to impress," the boy said. "It's 'Que pase un buen día'. To everyone else, that's pretty stuffy, so you'd just say 'Pase buen día'."

Steve smiled. And after stuffing the receipt in his bag and hefting it to his side, he waved at the boy and said, "Pase buen día, Alex!"

"Igualmente, Señor Steve!" the boy snapped back, and Steve smiled as he left the store.

> **Alex and his family eventually moved to Brooklyn, where Alex was inspired by Steve to solve local neighborhood crimes with his friends Jamal, Lenni, Gaby, Tina, and Rob. ;)**

Even more so when he saw Stiles' response.

_Well now I feel inadequate,_ Stiles said. Steve could hear the grumbling over the text. _I know English and Latin. And a little bit of Spanish from Scott, but not much._

Steve laughed. _You're not working in global operations like I am. Don't worry about it. Worry about boosting your test scores and getting through school._

Stiles sent back another _:P_ , which Steve took to mean as either Stiles obliging him, or Stiles very politely telling him to fuck off.

Probably both.

> **Definitely both.**

Stiles texted him again less than a week later. Steve was sitting in one of the SHIELD cafeterias, pretending he wasn't hiding from Hill and reading a practice passage in Russian. He finished up his passage, opened the message, and wished he hadn't.

_Remember our deal? From Thanksgiving?_

How could Steve forget?

Before Steve could say anything, he got another message from Stiles saying, _I told Scott about my panic attacks._

> **Yup, this happened right after Scott had his breakdown in the middle of the economics test and Stiles stopped his anxiety attack with a fake-out asthma attack in the locker-room.**

...well. Steve had hoped Stiles would tell someone, but he hadn't expected for it to happen this fast, not without a push from Steve. Still, more pressing was what this would mean for Steve.

He most definitely hadn't forgotten, but even if he had, Stiles reminded him, his last text reading a simple yet ominous, _Your turn._

With a distracted _Rgr_ to let Stiles know he saw it, Steve pocketed his phone and tried to figure out who he would tell about his shell shock - or, as the modern parlance put it, PTSD.

> **‘Rgr’ = “Roger”, as in ‘affirmative’.**

SHIELD psychiatrists were one thing - Steve was...relatively honest in his evaluations. They didn't know the details, but Steve told them whatever would be relevant to his work in the field. He sat on some border territory where he wasn't disqualified from field work yet, but he wouldn't need much to do so.

> **Not that honest, actually. If they knew he still suffered the occasional flashback, he would _not_ be working in the field, Captain America or not.**

Would telling someone personally, a friend or a teammate, make things better or worse?

It weighed down on his mind, and people noticed. Even Rumlow noticed when they were training on the new comm. system.

> **> :)**

"You okay, Cap?" he asked, lowering his voice a little even as the room filled with the upset beeping of multiple devices.

Steve looked down at his own earpiece he was trying to connect to the actual radio, one which could spread the channel over greater distances with much less loss of clarity.

"Yeah," Steve said, fiddling with the little devices. "Just - trying to figure out how to say something important."

"What is it?" Rumlow asked, his own radio and earpiece already working the way they were supposed to.

Steve sighed. "Nothing major, just..."

> **No lie, I briefly entertained the notion of having Steve spill his guts to Rumlow.**

On the one hand, even if they weren't in the army, anymore, Steve and Rumlow were military enough that their ranks mattered. On the other hand, most of Steve's experience with having a sergeant for his team was with Bucky, which was a whole different ballgame altogether.

Rumlow wasn't Bucky.

"Me and my nephew made a deal," Steve said. "He kept up his end of the deal, now I'm trying to keep up mine, that's all."

> **But, while they were friendly in Captain America 2, they didn’t seem all that _close_ …**

Rumlow recognized deflection when he saw it, shrugging it off and reaching over to help Steve with his earpiece.

Somehow, Steve wasn't surprised when he told Tony of all people.

> **…and anyway, Steve telling specifically Tony about them becomes relevant to the plot, later on.**

It was somewhat by accident. Steve had been thinking about it while chatting with Tony over Skype. Steve had his laptop up while eating Sunday brunch, and Tony was fiddling with something small at his work-table, splitting his attention between Steve and what was supposed to be some tele-comm revolution.

> **I don’t know if I’ve been conveying this particularly well, but I’ve been trying to imply that the team are often physically apart from each other, but try to stay in touch with each other as much as they can, and that Steve talking over Skype with them is pretty common. Hence why he was able to ask Bruce for an autograph for Lydia over a very casual Skype conversation.**

Steve thought it about it a little too much, as he realized when Tony's voice cut into this thoughts.

"You've been quiet for a solid five minutes, Cap," Tony said. He glanced up from his work. "And you've got your thinking face on."

Steve swallowed. "Just - trying to figure out how to say something that's hard for me to talk about."

"Something tells me you wouldn't be having so much trouble if this were good news," Tony said. Tony's eyes and hands were on his work, but Steve had no doubt that he had the bulk of Tony's actual attention.

"It's not exactly news," Steve said. "Kind of old, actually."

> **Very old. PTSD doesn’t start after the war – sometimes, PTSD starts _during_ it.**

"So what's making you say something, now?" Tony asked, squinting at whatever he was poking with his screwdriver. That Tony was listening without staring Steve down and waiting for an answer was surprisingly helpful.

> **Some people find it easiest to talk to someone who is paying them 100% of their attention. Others, though, actually find this a little too intense or intimidating, and find it easier to talk to someone who is primarily – or at least nominally – focused on something else.**

"I made a deal with my nephew," Steve said. "If he told someone about his panic attacks, I had to tell someone about my flashbacks."

There. He said it.

Tony froze, but didn't look up from his device.

That sudden stillness would be disconcerting on anyone, but on someone as animated as Tony, it was almost terrifying.

"...Tony?" Steve asked. Maybe this hadn't been a good idea, after all.

The man let out of a breath and slumped forward a little, setting down his work and clasping his hands under his chin, elbows propped on the edge of his table.

> **Tony’s surprise is 1/3 the fact that Steve has a mental illness, and 2/3 the fact that Steve is openly _admitting_ it. The casual acknowledgement of PTSD among veterans – or even a certain level of assumption about it – is very, _very_ recent. While activism for better acknowledgement and treatment of PTSD has been going on for a long time, the casual clinical knowledge of veteran PTSD among civilians is a very post-9/11 phenomena.**

"PTSD?" he asked finally. Steve nodded, even as Tony unnecessarily clarified, "The modern term for shell shock."

"I know," Steve said. "I don't lie on my psych evals, so I've heard this before. I just...don't give details."

"You have flashbacks?" Tony asked, raising an eyebrow. "Because that's not just a little detail-"

"I know," Steve said. "Look, it doesn't affect my work. I'm fine when I'm in the field, and even most of the time otherwise. They rarely happen, and when they do, it's only..." Steve trailed off, trying to figure out how to explain this.

"When you feel safe."

> **Your brain goes into danger mode as a survival mechanism. PTSD is what happens when your brain stays in danger mode _even when you’re no longer in danger_.**

His head snapped up at Tony's quiet pronouncement.

Tony took a deep breath and continued.

"When you've let your guard down, when you're relaxed, when you're not expecting nasty reminders...that's when the littlest things blindside you."

> **Like a child’s drawing when you’re out having lunch with your friend.**

Steve stared for a long, long moment.

"You sound like you're speaking from experience," he said finally.

Tony smiled, a wavering expression that did nothing to hide how forced and insincere it was.

"Anxiety attacks," Tony said, gesturing towards his own head. "Different flavor of panic attack, and a little closer to what you have."

> **Anxiety attacks are usually in response to particular triggers or stressors, and a little more generalized or long-lasting. Panic attacks are more likely to be unprovoked, and much more intense over a shorter period of time. They are mostly similar, but they are still actually two separate things.**

Steve blew out a long, thin breath as he wrapped his head around that.

"I've been stupid in keeping silent about this, haven't I?" Steve asked.

Tony shook his head.

"No," he said. "Even today, it's difficult for people to talk about. And your generation was a hell of a lot more repressed."

"I know people talk about it a lot more, these days," Steve said. "Just..." He waved at nothing with his fork. "It's private.

Tony snorted. "And the 21st century is all about privacy." Steve nodded in genuine understanding, even in the face of Tony's sarcasm.

> **I grew up during the era of fandom when we ‘hid’/kept our fandom identities separate from our real/offline ones (and if you were under 18 or 21, you lied your ass off about it). Seeing so many people – mostly kids – on Tumblr, today, who don’t think twice about posting their name, age, location, and _their pictures_ on their Tumblr honestly boggles my mind.**

"How's Clint?" Steve asked. Because Clint was the other person Steve had considered talking to about this.

Tony understood.

"He's okay now," Tony said. Then he pointed out, "But he wasn't taking a six-month vacation between Loki and active duty clearance. And the Hulk isn't the only reason why Bruce keeps such a tight lid on his feelings. I don't know much about Nat, but I only know a fraction of her life story and I'm horrified, so I imagine she's got her own issues, too, even if we don't see them."

> **The Avengers, AKA Team Issues TM.**

"The fact that we barely know anything about her is part of it," Steve speculated. "That's how she copes and protects herself."

> **Yeah, Steve, you aren’t projecting yourself onto her _at all_. :P**

Tony nodded, pointing to Steve with a gesture that said _there you go_.

They talked a lot longer than Steve would ever have expected. Tony's reluctance to come back to New York after the Mandarin made a lot more sense when Tony revealed that for a while, even mentions of New York sent him into anxiety attacks. This new perspective army of Iron Men was a bit of a surprise, but explained a few things, and by the time Tony finished detailing his own history with anxiety attacks and PTSD, Steve felt almost like a fool for never saying anything.

> **Iron Man 3: The Most Explosive Therapy Session in History**

Almost.

Tony could be a good listener when he wanted to be. He worked on his...whatever his invention was...so that Steve wasn't under a spotlight, but never actually lost track of what Steve said. Steve laughed when Tony described Bruce falling asleep in the middle of a story, and Tony's bottomless well of sarcasm kept Steve from descending into a spiral of latent fear and irrational panic.

By the end, Tony smiled at him and said, "Now you can tell your nephew that you kept up your end of the bargain." Here, he smirked. "Need me to sign a doctor's note for you?"

"You need to be a doctor for that," Steve drawled.

"I have an honorary Ph.D!" Tony protested.

> **Doesn’t he have like seven of them in the comic-book verse?**

Steve laughed, and said, "Don't worry, I won't mention you to him."

Tony pursed his lips in consideration.

"...if it helps him," Tony said finally. "You said he has panic attacks? And he doesn't tell people about them?"

"His own father doesn't know," Steve said. "I'm trying to get him to tell John - his dad - but it's...slow-going."

> **Incidentally, while I’m here: I’m ‘naming’ the Sheriff Noah Jonathan Stilinski. I like to stick to canon, but we’ve all been using John for too long – and I like the actor shout-out too much – to give up on it now. :P**

"Slow-going or no-going?" Tony asked. Steve just _looked_ at him. "Yeah, I figured."

With a wry chuckle, Steve bid Tony a goodnight and ended the call.

After finishing up his homemade pho, Steve pulled out his phone and started texting Stiles.

_I kept my end of the deal,_ Steve said. _I told Tony about my flashbacks. Turns out he has anxiety attacks of his own._

He paused, then added, _How did Scott take your panic attacks?_

When he finished washing up the dishes, Stiles' answer said, _I told him in the first place because he was having one._

Huh.

> **Panic and anxiety attacks for everyone.**

After putting everything onto the drying rack, Steve texted back, _You really should tell your dad._

The _NO!_ was predictable, but Steve still sighed a little sadly at that.

Steve pondered how to convince Stiles to tell his dad, and was still pondering this the next morning when John called and said, "I am seriously considering retiring. Let someone else deal with this bullshit."

John had called at the tail end of Steve's morning run - which meant it was still practically nighttime over in California. Slowing down, Steve asked, "What bullshit?"

> **New York and D.C. are three hours ahead of California. Since Steve usually runs at like 4 or 5 in the morning, the Sheriff is calling him at about 1 or 2 in the morning, California time.**

"Last night, Scott, Stiles, and three other kids - Allison Argent, Lydia Martin, and Jackson Whittemore - got trapped in the school with either a wild animal or the serial killer," John said. "Or both. Or neither! Who knows, because I sure as hell don't."

> **Where do you think Stiles gets his snark from?**

"What?!" Steve cried out, actually stopping for a minute to stare at the Mall in bewilderment.

John sighed, sounding exhausted. He must be working over his shift - again.

"Exactly what it sounds like," John said. "It looks like a wild animal - there are some claw-marks around the school, and the body has tooth marks-"

"Body?!" Steve cried out.

> **A lot of this scene was meant to convey just how insane the events of the TV show are from an outside perspective. As far as Steve knows or is concerned, Stiles is an ordinary kid living an ordinary life – and then suddenly serial killers, wild animals, and dead bodies everywhere.**

"None of the kids!" John immediately reassured him. "A janitor was found dead. He looked like he'd been mauled by an animal, and combined with the claw marks and the kids' own reports of some kind of monster dog thing, it looks like an animal. Except someone called the police station earlier in the nights to tip us off that some kids could be 'prank calling' us to the high-school. So we ignored their phone calls until we got other people calling us about it."

"Wild animals don't do that," Steve muttered, turning sharply on his heel and making his way back towards his apartment.

> **Which is why they blamed Derek.**

"No," John said. "And some of the other bodies looked the same."

"Could the serial killer be using a murderous animal as its weapon?"

"It's starting to look like it," John said, and groaned. "And god, if we could get the animal, it would be an instant conviction for the owner. But until then, this is the hardest kind of weapon to track or trace without a lead. The claw and bite marks are so bizarre no one can even agree what the hell it is. I've heard everything from wolves to bears, neither of which even exist around here, anymore."

> **It actually wouldn’t be an instant conviction for the owner if it were a wild animal doing everything – in that the owner could claim someone else was taking it and using it. It _would_ be instant death for the animal in question, though.**

As Steve waited at a stoplight, he said, "And the kids? How are they?"

"Rattled, but okay," John said. "They'll all probably still be at school come Monday."

"Kids are resilient like that," Steve said, meandering down the street. "And how are you?"

"Wondering if I should retire and quit while I'm ahead," John drawled, then sighed. "We traced the tip. It seemed to come from the hospital, but from a phone that's pretty publicly accessible and not monitored by any cameras."

> **Probably why even _Jackson_ was able to use it so easily in Season 1. Though I do like to imagine that Danny showed him a few tricks…**

"So almost definitely pre-planned?"

"Unfortunately," John said darkly.

"Want me to check in on Stiles?" Steve asked.

"Yes, please," John said gratefully. "When you can, at least."

"I don't have to be anywhere for a while," Steve said, as he turned onto his street. "Are you going to be able to head home, soon?"

"I just have to deal with a few more reports and I can go," John said. "I might just faceplant on the couch and not even bother with the bed."

> **Stiles gets that from him, too.**

"I'll be sure to mention that to Stiles," Steve said.

"Don't you dare!" John said. "God, he'd-"

"Help you to bed," Steve said cheekily, and hung up in the middle of John's protests.

Shaking his head, Steve pulled the phone away from his head. He made his way to the apartment, started up some instant oatmeal, and dialed Stiles.

After a few rings, Stiles answered with a surprised, "Steve?"

"Hey," Steve said. "Your dad told me about last night. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," Stiles said. "But the cool janitor is dead and Scott was dumped."

> ***Ron Weasley voice* He needs to straighten out his priorities.**

Steve blinked. "Cool janitor?" he asked, because a dead body was just a little bit more important than a teenager's love life.

"Yeah," Stiles said. "He's really nice, he knows half of us by name and sometimes turns a blind eye to, uh, things."

> **He let students get away with a little bit of nonsense because that makes it easier to contain it before it becomes a lot of nonsense.**

"Sounds nice," Steve agreed, pulling his oatmeal out of the microwave. "And Scott was dumped?"

"Sort of?" Stiles said. "She says it's a break. But Scott was...he may have gone haring off against the killer on his own and she took it the wrong way and, um, yeah."

"He was showing off?" Steve asked, stirring his breakfast idly with his spoon.

"I wouldn't call it that," Stiles hedged. "Just...he was trying, let's leave it at that."

> **If Scott _hadn’t_ been just a little bit of a dumbass, he would’ve been an awful lot of monstrous murderer, that night. We don’t see it because Scott fought off the alpha’s command, but if he hadn’t, he would’ve brutally mauled or outright murdered the teenagers there, that night.**

Trying to impress her, Steve thought, and said out loud, "But you're okay?"

"Yeah," Stiles said. "Dad's guys are already investigating."

"He told me," Steve said. "Might want to check in on him when he gets home, he sounded tired."

"Roger that, Rogers," Stiles said, and Steve rolled his eyes, even as he smiled at the terrible pun. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a way to cheer up Scott. And see if I can figure out anything about the thing that attacked us last night. And make sure my dad doesn't keel over as soon as he gets home."

"Good luck," Steve deadpanned, and stared down at his phone in quiet speculation as he ate his breakfast.

He recognized deflection when he saw it. But what was Stiles deflecting him from?

> **The very early hints that Something Was Seriously Wrong, and Steve may not really know what it is, but he knows _of_ it.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday, and since I don't think I'll be able to update any fic, here's an author commentary, instead. :P


	22. 4.6 - Attempted Kidnapping

Steve was never more grateful for having a private room at Sabalauski than when the piercing ringtone of his phone woke him up in the middle of the night.

> **The United States Army Air Assault School, officially the Sabalauski Air Assault School, is where soldiers learn aerial assault maneuvers (i.e. how to get in and out of helicopters in combat, fast-roping down from a chopper, jumping out of airplanes, etc.). Only about half the soldiers who attempt it actually make it through the program. Steve, however, probably has no problem with it given all the crazy shit he’d been doing even before he got formal training in it – he jumped out of a plane over a combat zone _decades_ before the school was established.**

"Hello?" Steve answered, frowning at the time.

"Captain Rogers?" an official voice asked.

"Yes," Steve said. "Who is this?"

"This is Agent Marie Kale, from the Security Department of Human Resources."

Steve stiffened and started to push himself up. HR's Security department wasn't for security of actual SHIELD agents, but their at-risk family members.

> **I really doubt this is how the security of agents’ family members would be handled, but I didn’t want to get too involved in developing that, or spend too much time trying to explain it in the story.**

"I don't want to alarm you," she continued. "So I'll start by stating your nephew is fine. However, we believe there may have been a kidnapping attempt."

"What happened?" Steve demanded, wincing as he switched on the lamp by his bed. "Where is he?"

"He is safe and at home with his father," Agent Kale said. "But earlier tonight, he was accompanying a friend of his to visit someone at a long-term care facility."

"Scott?" Steve asked, confused, because he couldn't think of someone the boys would want to visit.

"No," she said. "Give me a moment and I can-"

"Nevermind," Steve said, because he could ask Stiles about it later. 'Later' meaning as soon as he was done with Agent Kale. "Please, continue."

> **Heh, trying a little too hard to show that while Steve vaguely knows of the existence of this Derek person, he never learns much about the man, or even his last name. If he had, Steve would’ve remembered his first foray into Beacon Hills and known that Stiles’ new ‘friend’ wasn’t human ages ago.**

"There's not much to say," she said. "There was some kind of violent conflict, and someone else called the police. By the time they got there, Mr. Stilinski was fine, but half the reception area was trashed. The security cameras were disabled, and had been since at least the night before. He says their assailant was a Caucasian man with brown hair and wearing a long, black coat, but he couldn't get a closer look than that. The friend he was accompanying there in the first place fought the assailant off. LEOs got there, and since it's..." She paused. "Stiles?"

"Stiles," Steve confirmed. Apparently, someone wrote down the nickname in his security profile.

> **Good grief, we actually heard his name in the show and I still can’t help but wonder how to pronounce ‘Mieczyslaw’.**

"Well, since it involved him, we were alerted by default. Especially since it didn't look related to any of Sheriff Stilinski's cases, meaning the attack on him was probably related to you," she said.

Steve took in a sharp breath. "But he's fine?"

"Just a bruise on his forehead, nothing more," she said, voice softening a little. "We don't have more information, yet. Unless you have any more questions, I'll hang up so you can call and check on him, yourself."

"Thank you," Steve said.

"No problem, Captain," she said, and ended the call.

Steve took a few deep, bracing breaths, then went to his Contacts and jabbed down on Stiles' picture.

> **I was gonna try and imply that Steve has fake names and pictures in his Contacts…but if he has a secure phone, then it’s actually unlikely he’d bother. Stiles goes through the trouble specifically because he doesn’t have much in the way of security on his phone.**

Less than two rings later, Stiles answered the phone with, "Steve, I'm fine."

Steve let out a breath at the sound of exasperation. "Are you sure?"

"Ugh, here," Stiles whined.

A moment later, he heard John's voice saying, "Yeah, he's fine. Mostly."

"I _am_ fine!" Stiles cried out from the background.

"Just has a bruise on his forehead," John continued. Steve smiled at Stiles' grumbling. "I took off the rest of my shift and brought Stiles home as soon as one of the orderlies from the long-term care center called."

> **A grumpy and grumbly Stiles is a healthy and safe Stiles. :P**

"Seriously, I'm fine," Stiles said. There was some scuffling, and then Stiles' voice was much clearer as he added, "I'm pretty sure the guy wasn't even there for me, I think he was there for Derek."

"...the guy you accused of murder?" Steve asked dubiously.

"Oh my god," Stiles protested. Steve could hear the eyeroll from all the way over in Kentucky. "It's not like that, Jesus! I told you, I'm helping him with something, we just swung by to see his uncle and the guy in the coat was there."

> **The Air Assault School is in Kentucky. Also, for some reason, every time I type that, I keep typing ‘Kentrucky’ and had to go back and edit it.**

"Stiles, this is serious-"

"I know!" Stiles said. "I'm not an idiot. I'm just saying you don't have to worry, because I'm pretty sure this wasn't about Captain America."

"It was about someone trying to hurt you," Steve said. "So I don't really care who, how, or why - I'm still going to worry."

> **Stiles is still used to thinking of himself – and harm to himself – in terms of utility.**

"Okay, you know what? Video time!"

Indeed, within a moment of Steve pulling the phone away from his ear and looking at the screen, the phone was prompting him to accept a video call.

Stiles' face filled the little screen, smiling despite the already-reddening bruise on his forehead.

> **Luckily, he’s also a very good liar.**

"See?" Stiles said. "Fine! And as I was just trying to tell my dad-" Here, Stiles pointed to this forehead. "This wasn't even from the fight. I just wasn't paying attention earlier in the night and hit my head on the steering wheel. Seriously, I'm fine."

With a swallow and a smile, Steve nodded. "I believe you," he said.

Stiles pursed his lips. "You both need'a chill, you know that?"

Steve huffed in amusement, sitting up and leaning back against the wall. "Are you sure you don't know anything else about who attacked you? Or any-"

"I already went over all this with the cops once, Steve," Stiles grumped. "And then again with the SHIELD lady. Seriously, I'm fine. _Chill._ " A pause. "Both of you."

Steve could imagine the face John would be making, right now.

> **(一。一）**

"I'll 'chill' when you stay out of trouble long enough for my head to cool down," John said sardonically. Steve laughed at the indignation on Stiles' face.

"Ugh!" The screen blurred as Stiles handed the phone over, and Steve found himself looking 'up' at a bewildered John. "Tell him I'm fine, 'cause I'm out. I never got the chance to shower after lacrosse and I'm still hella gross."

With that particular California-ism, Stiles waved at Steve, hand flitting between the phone camera and John's chin. Steve listened as the sound of Stiles storming off faded away.

> **Honestly, no one in the show says ‘hella’ nearly as much as Nor-Californians do. Probably because it’s filmed in SoCal. :P**

The camera moved again, so John was holding Stiles' phone level with his face.

"How is he, really?" Steve asked.

"Amazingly, fine," John said. Then he slumped back in his seat, the phone image shuttering a bit. "And no closer to explaining what the hell is going on with him and Scott and why they're staying out late, all the time."

> **Trying to tapdance along the line of the Sheriff and Steve knowing something’s up with the kids, but not quite aware of the severity of their circumstances, yet.**

Steve nodded in understanding. "And how are you?"

"A few hairs grayer, but otherwise also fine," John said, smiling wryly. But he had a pensive look on his face.

In silence, Steve waited. There was something on the other man's mind, and his troubled countenance troubled _Steve_.

John was a cop through and through, so it took a while. The man probably knew what Steve was doing.

> **Cop tactic: keep quiet long enough, and they’ll fill the silence for you.**

Yet after a minute, John looked up and said, "How much danger is Stiles in, really? As your next-of-kin?"

> **Yet again, I was actually using ‘next of kin’ wrong in this context. Steve might’ve used it incorrectly, but in retrospect, the Sheriff really wouldn’t have. :/**

Steve froze. He was grateful that most of his body was out of the line of sight of the camera, but his face was enough to make John look full of regret.

"I didn't mean it like that," he started.

"Yes, you did," Steve said. "And I don't blame you one bit. I was worried about it, too - it's why I resisted, at first. You have every right to be mad at me."

> **Heh, family fluff is all well and good, but I didn’t want the family to be completely without tension. >:)**

"I'm not mad," John said. He sounded honest enough. "It would be the height of hypocrisy if I were."

Steve tilted his head, silently asking John to elaborate.

"I'm a cop," John pointed out. "A sheriff, to boot. This isn't the first time Stiles has been threatened because of someone hoping to use him as leverage. It's just the first time he's been attacked for it."

"What happened?" Steve asked, for the second time that night.

John blew out an exhausted breath, reaching up to rub at his face with his free hand. There was some scuffling sounds and the picture blurring again as John set the phone down on something. Then the picture was still again - a little lower, but much steadier. Behind John, the Stilinskis' kitchen was dimly lit.

"Just after I first got into office," John said, gesturing towards his Sheriff's badge. "Someone we'd arrested still had connections we couldn't get warrants on. It was nothing overt. He just started chatting all about the middle school lacrosse team, completely out of nowhere. He didn't have kids, and Stiles was on the team at the time. This guy was talking about the team's game calendars and practice schedules and..." John perched his elbows on the table as he wrapped his hands over his face for a moment. Then he dropped and crossed his arms. "I've had guys I arrested say all sorts of crap to me. How they'd find me and kill me, kill the people I loved, find and murder my wife and kids, all of that. But it was just shit they'd say in the heat of the moment. Most of them didn't even know my first name at the time, let alone have any capacity to find my family or figure out where I lived. But this guy...just talking like that. Telling me how easy it would be for him or his associates to find my son, to hurt him - I'd never been so terrified."

> **I debated having an actual attack, but for a parent, this is actually a lot more terrifying. If there was an actual attack or kidnapping, but the guy was caught and Stiles was brought home safely, that’s a whole different world from ‘these guys know where my son will be and when, and I cannot put them in jail/stop them’. >:)**

"God," Steve breathed out, trying to imagine that.

"It was just so-" John took another deep breath. "Jesus, Steve, even the local Yakuza head never did that, and me and Silverfinger actually have some nasty history with each other. This guy - it's been a quarter decade, he's been convicted, and half his friends are behind bars now, too. But I still have nightmares about it."

> **Incidentally, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa - the guy who played Silverfinger - also played the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat, in which Linden Ashby (who plays Sheriff Stilinski) played Johnny Cage. Kind of a shame there wasn't a reference or shout-out to this in the show…**

"I'll bet," Steve admitted. He still had all sorts of nightmares from nearly a century ago, he could imagine John would still be scared for Stiles. "But Stiles was fine, right? He was never attacked before tonight?"

"Well," John said darkly. "He wasn't attacked for anything related to him being important to someone else important."

Steve frowned. "So you're saying he's been attacked for other reasons?" Steve narrowed his eyes at John, at his face. "You wouldn't look like this if you were just talking about bullies or fights at school."

> **While we might have a much harsher look on these things today, people (especially men) of Steve’s age or even the Sheriff’s age are going to view schoolyard fights and bullying a lot more lightly, which is why they’d speak so casually about it.**

John swallowed. "You know how his mother died?"

"Frontotemporal dementia," Steve recited. He remembered reading that file for the first time, memory ringing with dozens of Mrs. Barnes' jokes about how many of her family members had gone senile in Romania. "What happened?" he asked. Again.

> **Mental illness, especially dementia, does often run in families, so it’s likely that one of the Barnes sisters would’ve gotten at some point, had it not been for them dying of other causes.**

He regretted it as John's eyes started to shine. However, they remained dry as the man scrubbed at his face again.

"I won't go into details," John said. "But the dementia gave her delusions, and she...didn't always remember who or what Stiles was. I guess that's why I tend not to worry about Stiles staying out too late or anything. The worst assault he ever experienced in his life was from his own mother and in his own home. Fretting about anything else paled in comparison."

> **Random aside: domestic violence really plays hell on your perception of safety and home, and whether home is _safe_ or just _safer_. That’s a very important distinction that people who come from happy, healthy home lives really underestimate.**

Steve honestly gasped. The sharp breath scraped his nostrils and burned down his throat as he tried to imagine that. He couldn't imagine being attacked by the person you loved most, being attacked by the center of your world when they didn't even recognize you. "Oh my god," he said. "He...she...?"

> **> :)**

John pursed his lips.

"Stiles is a lot better now than he was that day, let's leave it at that," John said. Then he took a deep breath, pushing himself away from the edge of the table and sitting up a little straighter. "Look, the point I was trying to make is that I'm not mad you for tonight, and I don't blame you for being a danger to Stiles. Me and his mother were a danger to him long before you were ever in the picture. I just want to know, honestly and sincerely, how much danger he's in from your enemies, so I can protect him. I already know how to protect him from _my_ enemies, but terrorists are a completely different ball-game from street gangs, domestic abusers, and corporate sharks."

> **And, of course, werewolves are an entirely different kind of threat from both of those, that neither of them are prepared for. :P**

Steve thumped his head back against the wall, trying not to think of how exhausted he was going to be while jumping out of helicopters tomorrow. There was no way he would get any decent amount of rest, tonight.

"I don't know," Steve said, finally. "For the most part, Stiles is safe just by virtue of the fact most people have little to gain from kidnapping him. SHIELD doesn't negotiate with terrorists anymore than anyone else does, and the moment Stiles was taken hostage, I would lose access to most security-sensitive documents and locations until either he was rescued or killed. Most people left who want to kidnap him, they would only do so to hurt me or to make a statement, and most of _them_ aren't even on this side of the planet." Then Steve brought his head back up to look at John. "But that doesn't mean there aren't some people who slip between the cracks, or crazies just acting on their own."

> **~~Or HYDRA.~~ **

John nodded. "I just want my son safe."

Steve scrubbed at his face. Was John implying...? "I understand-"

"But it won't come by cutting him off from you," John continued. "I'm a cop, Steve. I know too much about the crazy stuff that can happen to people even when they don't have connections to anyone powerful, let alone when they do." John smiled at him. "I still expect you to come visit us soon. Maybe you can keep Stiles occupied during his spring break."

> **The reality is that it doesn’t matter if Steve abruptly cut off all contact with Stiles and never spoke to him again. Between all the papertrail traces in SHIELD and all the people who know about Captain America having an adoptive nephew of his best friend’s family, Stiles will now always be in danger – because Steve cares about him.**

Steve laughed, a little wet but a lot genuine. "I'll do my best," he promised.

After a few more goodbyes, they ended the call. Steve put the phone back on his charger, and for a moment just stared at the wall opposite to him.

He swung his legs over the edge of the thin bed, intending to get up and start making his way through some of the air assault safety material. It was late enough in the morning that he could just get an early start on his day. That was good, since he was going to spend most of the day learning how to properly jump out of helicopters.

> **Finally. It only took him seventy years. Though helicopters actually didn’t exist, yet, back in WWII. Still, Steve does have a bad jumping-from-ridiculous-heights problem. The funny thing is that in the comics, this came about/developed in part due to Captain America’s closeness to Iron Man and how often they worked and fought together on the Avengers.**

He meant to, but instead he fell back on his ass and had to drop his head between his knees, trying not to think of just how close he might've come to losing Stiles, tonight.

His ma's death had been the first time he lost his family. His own death had been the second.

Steve wasn't sure if he'd be able to survive a third time.

> **Probably not…but I guess we’ll see. >:)**

It took almost ten minutes of the deep breathing exercises Bruce had taught him before Steve could calm down and sit-up straight. He ended up going for a nice, long jog - not a full run, saving some energy for later today, but it was a meditative and calming run in the cool morning air.

> **Morning exercise is not only an integral part of a soldier’s daily life, but also a huge help in mitigating PTSD, flashbacks, and nightmares.**

He may not have run fast, but he ran for a damn long time, doing his best to let his frustrations out with the pounding of his feet and let the cool air sluice the panic away. Steve came back just in time to see some morning formations fall-in. He went to the showers just to rinse off the worst of his sweat so he didn't stink up the canteen at breakfast.

Just as Steve was finishing up his morning meal, John called again.

"I apologize," Steve said to the lieutenant he was chatting with. "Urgent family matter." The young woman nodded, turning back to some materials brief, while Steve scooted his butt down the bench a little for some semblance of privacy.

"So it looks like last night's attack might've been about me instead of you, after all," John said as soon as Steve answered the phone.

> **Oh, how wrong both of you are. :P**

Steve frowned down at his poor excuse for scrambled eggs and said, "What do you mean?"

"One of the patients is missing from the long-term care center, and a nurse," John said. "So it looks like Stiles was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And...you know the dead body Stiles and Scott found in the woods?" Steve hummed affirmatively. "Well, the missing patient was her uncle. And Stiles was only there in the first place because he was there with her brother, the missing patient's nephew."

"What was he doing there?" Steve asked, setting down his fork and reaching for the coffee.

"Stiles says moral support," John said. "My best guess? Neither of them buy the animal killing - to be honest, I don't either - and Stiles is trying to play detective and help the guy find out who killed her." John sighed. "And if someone just kidnapped her uncle, I'm guessing that means they were close, even if no one is going to admit anything."

> **I didn’t want to make Sheriff or Steve idiots and I wanted to make sure Idiot Balling wasn’t central to the plot. But if you don’t realize the severity of what the kids are caught up in, then there’s a lot of room for apathy, not from negligence or lack of care, but simply from the assumption that things are only mild of circumstance. There’s a world of difference between “Stiles is trying to play detective by helping someone look into a questionable circumstance” and “Stiles is dealing with crazy serial killers”. ;)**

Steve took a bracing sip of his mud-masquerading-as-coffee. "Does this have anything to do with the serial killer you're investigating?"

"God, I hope not," John said. "Which means it probably is."

Steve swallowed, giving up on his eggs and focusing on his coffee. "Do you need to get him out of town for a while?" Steve said. "I know it's kind of far, but if you want him out of town for a bit, he's always welcome at my apartment."

"Thanks," John said. "But this is Stiles we're talking about. If we even managed to get him to D.C. in the first place, he'd stage a jailbreak and be right back here pestering me about my breakfast choices before we could blink."

> **John knows this would never work – if it did, he’d have had Stiles out of there in a heartbeat.**

Steve nodded, despite the fact John couldn't see it. "I know. But still, offer's open."

"Thanks, Steve," John said. "Hopefully, your day will be better than mine."

"I'm getting shoved out of helicopters today," he pointed out sardonically. He'd told them about Air Assault School over a week ago.

"Good luck," John said with a light laugh. "Word of advice? Chewing gum. Or at least pretend you're chewing gum, make your jaw go through the motions. It'll help with the air-pressure changes."

> **This is legit, by the way. If you’re flying in a plane or even just driving up a tall hill or a mountain, chew gum! Even if you don’t have any, just keep your mouth a little open and periodically ‘yawn’. This will alleviate a lot of the altitudinal pressure problems in your cranium. I’ve been flying several times a year for half my life and I almost never fly without gum or a snack of some kind for this explicit purpose.**

Steve smiled. Maybe he could swing by the commissary on his way out. "I'll keep that in mind."

John ended the call, and Steve pocketed the phone, looking up to see the young lieutenant - fresh out of college - watching him curiously.

"Everything okay, sir?" she asked, setting down the packet of papers she was reading.

"For now," Steve said, picking up his fork again.

She nodded in understanding. "'For now' is the best we can ever really ask for."

Truer words had never been spoken.


	23. 4.7 - That's So Gay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly **NSFW** (embedded images of WWII-era safe sex posters).

_It's official. My type is 'hot but would eat me alive'._

Despite the fact there was no one around to see Steve, he raised an amused eyebrow at Stiles' text. Well, no one paying attention, anyway, since right now he was just another person standing in line at Starbucks.

> **We’ll notice if we screw up your drink, though. When I was first starting out as a barista, I sucked at making cappuccinos. During a rush period, I made one which I’m sure sucked, and when I called out the drink for ‘Adam’ and realized I’d just handed it to _Adam Sandler_ , I was terrified. Convinced that he was going to leave a complaint and since he was a famous celebrity I was going to get fired. But then he not only took the drink, he actually took a sip of it and told me he loved it before leaving. No wonder everyone says he’s such a nice guy, whatever you think about his movies.**

_What brought this on?_ he asked.

_MY LIFE._

Steve set the phone aside to order his coffee - well, mocha, since Starbucks' actual coffee made the Marines' taste good - before going over to the little waiting section. He skimmed the front page of the newspaper on a newsstand that he was pretty sure was there just for show. Within a few minutes, his phone vibrated again.

> **Starbucks used to use a much better coffee as the “default” coffee, called the House blend. It’s delicious! They moved to Pike partially because it’s cheaper, and partially because they were trying to ‘court the McDonalds customer base’. And now corporate’s getting all pissy that people are calling Starbucks the McDonalds of coffee and that they have a reputation for shitty coffee. But they keep it, because the shitty coffee allows them the veneer of being a coffee shop while that coffee being shitty encourages people to fork up more money for the better-tasting coffee.**

_Do you know how hard it is to hate someone whose bones you wanna climb like a tree?_

Steve could just imagine Stiles' indignant flailing. _Who is this about?_

_Derek!_

> **Fandom tends to have all characters treat all ‘young person attracted to older person’ crushes like an impending relationship. However, adults are well aware that teenagers are horny little shits and get crushes all the time, which is why they are only really concerned when they see an older person _reciprocating_ a crush. A teenager having the crush itself is rarely ever going to catch an adult’s attention.**

What the...?

_The guy you accused of murder?_

They called for a two mochas for Grant and Marge. Steve picked up his drinks and went outside, meandering his way towards Peggy's nursing home but not trying to be speedy about it.

> **Steven _Grant_ Rogers and _Margaret_ Carter. Steve doesn’t know the details of what Peggy went through with the SSR after the war, so he doesn’t know that she might not be biggest fan of the nickname. (For those of you who haven’t seen Agent Carter: in an office where agents referred to each other respectfully by their surnames, the men kept calling her ‘Marge’ like a secretary, both to denote the sexism as well as how little they knew her that they didn’t even call her Peggy. It was a huge step when they eventually started calling her ‘Carter’.) That said, given that most of those men eventually turned into very respectful co-workers, comrades, and friends, Peggy might look back on the name with greater humor.**

_That was a mistake I'm trying to fix,_ Stiles texted back. _I'm helping him figure out some family stuff to try and make up for accusing him of murder. BUT. I made the mistake of looking at him while he was changing shirts. HE HAS ABS._

Steve was still laughing when the next text came in, saying simply, _And HIS ARMS. They might give Thor a run for his money._

If anyone ever asked - not that anyone ever would, but if they did - Steve would admit whole-heartedly just how much he couldn't stop himself from his response.

_You must be serious if you're comparing his arms to Thor's._

> **From Steve’s perspective, Stiles having a crush on Derek is no different than Stiles’ crush on Thor, or countless teenagers who have a crush on himself as Captain America.**

The response was on his phone by the time Steve crossed the street.

_HE HAS A TATTOO ON HIS BACK._

Then in rapid succession, even as Steve was looking down at the phone:

_I hate him._

__

__

I hate my life.

I hate everything.

__

Being a teenager really hadn't changed much over the eighty years or so since he was one, himself.

> **Yes and no. The idea of adolescence as a transition period between childhood and adulthood has been around for a long time, but it’s only from the post-Depression era that we really start to see adolescence being treated as its own phase of life, rather than merely the time of transition towards adulthood. The nuances varied from culture to culture, but generally speaking, someone was considered a child until they hit puberty – which was typically 12-14 back then – and then an adult from around 16 onwards. However, puberty started happening earlier and earlier, and ‘adulthood’ started getting pushed back (labor laws impacting how the workforce treats people over 18 vs under 18; ages for voting, drinking, and various major financial decisions getting moved around; and the age when people finished their highest level of formal education took some huge leaps upwards as more and more people started to pursue post-secondary education – in one generation, we went from people starting their lives at 18 when they graduated high school, to when they graduated college at around 22, or even later for higher-educated professionals). So it’s only over the last few generations that we really see “teenager” become an entity unto itself.**

Then he frowned, as the thought of ages made him think of another thing. Because he remembered them talking about this 'Derek' fella, and Steve always got the impression that man was, well, a man. An adult, at the very least.

_How old is he?_ Steve asked.

It took a few minutes, but he got what was probably a reluctant answer.

_23_

> **But of course, what actually constitutes “reciprocating” can be hard to discern, so when Stiles mentions running around with an older guy a lot, Steve still double-checks. To him, Derek is closer to his own age than to Stiles’ age.**

Oh, good lord. Well, Steve could admit it was slightly hypocritical on his part, but still. If that sort of age difference would've had him looking twice back in his time, he could just imagine the kind of reactions it would cause, today.

_Are you sure this is a good idea?_

_Relax,_ Stiles texted back. _I'm like 95% sure he's straight, anyway, and even if he weren't, you've seen me. I'm not even getting any luck with someone my age, let alone his._

> **Currently, Stiles also assumes his crush is just that – a crush. He really does think he’s out of Derek’s league.**

Well.

He supposed if this was just Stiles ranting, it was probably harmless. Steve doubted Stiles would've even mentioned Derek by name if the boy had thought he'd had a chance to take a tumble in the hay with him.

> **Because they’re both smart enough to realize that if Stiles thought he had a chance with Derek, he wouldn’t risk Steve (or his dad) having information to potentially mess it up.**

So instead of anything more serious, he searched on the Internet a little. He found an archive of Captain America posters he'd posed or were made of his character from back in his USO days.

> **Here are my two favorite WWII condom posters:**

> **Yes, they actually had Donald Duck telling soldiers to remember to carry condoms around with them.**

He found the pamphlet reminding soldiers to use condoms while on leave, and sent that to Stiles.

> **Back then, condoms were less about preventing pregnancy in women and more about preventing STDs in men. Syphilis and gonorrhea were the biggest concerns for the military. Despite the sexist overtones of it today (in a world with widely available birth control options but the onus mostly on women), back then it was really helpful because for soldiers, it was often a lot easier and cheaper to get condoms. For a woman – prostitute or not – she often faced tremendous social penalties if seen getting any ( _especially_ if unmarried), and as a civilian it would often be a little harder or pricier for her to get her hands on. Hence the big campaigns for soldiers to start carrying their own condoms around – it might be the only way condoms would get into circulation and get used at all.**

It took barely a minute to get back a woeful, _I wish._

> **The real question is, now in the 21st century, _is there a safe sex Captain America PSA_? Did Peter have to watch Captain America telling him to only practice safe sex after stealing his shield and getting beaten up by him???**

As long as you use one when it happens, Steve said. Then he added, just in case, _But I'd hold off on the older guy if I were you. Stick to boys and girls your own age._

He was rather unsurprised when, a few minutes later - only a few blocks away from the nursing home - he got a response. He honestly smiled in bemusement when he read it.

_Weren't big age differences normal in your day?_

Steve rolled his eyes and answered, _They were more common, but that doesn't mean they were perfectly accepted. I felt bad being an 18-year-old girl's first kiss as Captain America. You should definitely hold off on anything more than admiring this guy from a distance._

Unsurprisingly, as Steve approached the nursing home, Stiles responded with what was probably meant to be a rhetorical question.

_Was the girl okay?_

Smirking, Steve responded, _Well, she's the Queen of England, now, so I guess it wasn't too hard on her._

> **I wrote this in due in large part to a fic I’d vaguely planned out a while back that was literally just Steve and “Lizzie” semi-RPF fic. Soon after that I got soured on RPF fandom in general so I kinda abandoned it, but I still remember it. It wasn’t all that shippy – Princess Elizabeth does at one point ask Steve for her first kiss, but otherwise it’s mostly these two being friends.**

By the time he approached the doors of the nursing home, Stiles had texted back _WHAT?!?!_

> **The real Elizabeth actually did do a lot of propaganda work during the war, like Steve did – and also actually worked _in_ the war as an ambulance driver, much like Steve later went into war for real. She never forgot what she learned, either. Back in 1998, when the Saudi Arabian king Abdullah (then the crown prince) was visiting the Queen’s estate, she offered him a tour – [and then drove the Land Rover, herself](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/driving-king-anecdote-goes-viral/), because women were not (and still are not) allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, she made him nervous with her army driving. >:)**

There were several more messages, but at this point, Steve ignored them, letting Stiles marinate in his own shock as he went to Peggy's room.

> **I like to headcanon that she taught Steve how to drive. :P**

"What's so funny?" she asked as he settled into the chair at her bedside, setting her preferred caramel mocha within easy reach for her.

> **Her very illicit caramel mocha.**

"Not much," Steve said, and held up his still-vibrating phone. "Just telling my nephew about that time I kissed Lizzie."

Peggy immediately swatted at his arm, and Steve laughed as she rolled her eyes. "For heaven's sake, Steve - that nickname was bad enough when she was the princess, but it's even worse now that she's the queen!"

Steve smiled at her mostly-mock indignation.

> **Adopted by America as she was, she’s still an Englishwoman through and through.**

"Why were you telling him about it in the first place?" she asked. She reached for her drink with shaking hands, but she still managed to pick it up and bring the straw to her lips.

Steve ached to help, but he knew how well she'd take it. Instead, he said, "He has a crush on a twenty-three-year-old. He's sixteen. I was telling him to hold off."

"You were convincing your nephew not to pursue an older partner by telling him about the time you _were_ the older partner?" she asked, raising an unimpressed eyebrow after a small sip of her mocha.

> **Peggy is smart enough to realize that to a teenager, that’s saying “older guys into teenagers are probably okay because I was sorta kinda one of them”.**

"I was telling him how I felt bad about it!" Steve said defensively.

She rolled her eyes. "I've actually been awake for the last seventy years and I still remember adolescence better than you."

"I also sent him that pamphlet of Captain America reminding soldiers to use prophylactics when on leave," Steve added. Peggy burst out laughing, which quickly descended into coughing.

> **Back during the war, Peggy probably got a bunch and put them up at the most random places in the SSR just to troll Steve. She occasionally packed one in Steve’s kit like some people put notes in their loved one’s lunches for the day, much to the Howlies’ eternal appreciation and humor.**

Before Steve could even help, though, she was already waving at him to sit down.

"That seems..." one final cough. "A bit much."

"Eh," Steve said with a shrug. "I hope he makes wise choices, but I want him to be safe even if he doesn't."

She smiled. "Well, at least if it's an older woman, they can be responsible for him."

Steve took a deep breath, then said carefully, "Older man, actually."

> **Steve is very slowly and very carefully coming to terms with the 21st century’s attitudes towards homosexuality…but first he has to untangle some leftover WWII baggage about it.**

Peggy was about to say something, when she caught sight of his face, paused, then groaned and rolled her eyes with exasperation. "Steve, what on earth were you expecting me to say?"

"I wasn't-"

"Your face, Steve!" she snapped.

Steve sighed. "Just - I know some people's attitudes towards two fellas, today are...more accepting. But you're-"

"-Your age," Peggy reminded him. "You may have thought you were being subtle with Sergeant Barnes, but you were not."

> **She loved Steve. Steve loved her. She also saw that Steve loved Bucky, even if Steve himself was hesitant to label his feelings for Bucky as being of the same category as his feelings for Steve. What makes Peggy roll her eyes is that Steve didn’t realize Bucky felt the same way. That said, she is no matchmaker or fag-hag. This was an era when two men falling in love carried severe, life-changing penalties and consequences, and those two men ‘should’ have found themselves women to spend their lives with (even if they spent the occasional nights with men during a war, when people often felt that ‘love’/sex was consequence-less due to the perpetual fog of impending and potential death on the horizon for soldiers).**

Steve frowned. "Peggy-"

She held up a hand, stopping the words in his lungs.

"I don't know what, exactly, the relationship between you two was, but I know it was more than friends, even if it was less than lovers," she said. "I always knew."

Steve sighed. "It's Complicated."

> **Steve adapts to the 21st century fast.**

"I suppose that's why the Internet considers that a relationship status, now," Peggy drawled, and Steve laughed. She continued, "Well, hopefully you and Barnes remembered to use-"

"We never got that far," Steve said. "We never... I had with some other guys, before the serum, and with some girls after. But never with Bucky."

> **I’m trying to reveal this slowly and carefully so that it’s only a part of Steve’s story, and that Steve’s story doesn’t become about his love life or sex life. But in this instance, what I am trying to imply is that Steve was somewhat openly gay (or at least involved in queer culture) before the war, and that he was at least somewhat in love with Bucky – but that he never said as much to Bucky, kept his gay hook-ups to himself, and Bucky ‘died’ without ever even knowing that Steve was in love with him.**

Peggy gave Steve a once-over, her gaze as piercing now as when she'd been evaluating him for Project Rebirth. Feeling a little self-conscious, Steve took another sip of his own mint mocha.

"That's a shame," she said, finally. "You two would've made for a lovely image together."

Steve choked on his drink. He was coughing from inhaling his stupid mocha in shock and Peggy was coughing from laughing at him too hard. It was a solid five minutes of them being pathetic and their cardiovascular systems trying to right themselves, and it was the best five minutes of his entire month.

> **Get it, Pegs!**

Eventually, they calmed down, spending several companionable minutes sitting in silence and holding hands.

Then Steve broke that silence with a soft, "You were always the most beautiful person in the room."

"I was the most beautiful _woman_ in the room," she said. "But while you certainly looked at me when you thought I couldn't see, you also looked at Barnes when you thought _he_ couldn't see." She tilted her head and squeezed his hand as tightly as she could. "Sweetheart, no one missed the cow eyes you two made at each other."

> **You know how Stiles started this scene by saying he had a type? This line was meant to subtly imply Steve’s type, too. Combined with the earlier jokes on Scott’s part about how Peggy sounds like Lydia, I’m trying to imply that they have the same type/a similar type (which is a very, very early precursor to a lot of Derek and Bucky parallels stewing down the line).**

"We never made cow eyes!" Steve said, with a voice that even to his ears was reminiscent of Stiles' indignation.

"Close enough," she drawled. "Your nephew has a good man to model his relationship after."

"...I never even kissed Bucky," Steve pointed out. "I kissed you."

"And yet it was Bucky for whom you risked your life several times, not me," Peggy said, releasing his hand to pat it. "You died for him, Steve."

> **I do want to maintain that Bucky is the most important relationship in Steve’s life. But I don’t want it to be _because_ of any sexual or romantic relationship between them – that’s just a happy by-product. Hence this bit – Steve never even kissed Bucky, revealed any feelings, or had any reason to expect that Bucky would return the favor. He basically thinks that Bucky is straight. But that doesn’t stop him from loving Bucky – even as a best friend and almost brother – and that doesn’t stop him from dedicating his life to Bucky’s in a way men are normally only expected to do for their wives.**

"I should've lived for you," Steve muttered, not trying to hide his guilt.

> **But there’s no such thing as _one true love_ and Steve has fallen in love more than once. Dying for someone is easy – _living_ for them is hard.**

She had no tolerance for nonsense, and said as much. "You didn't. And I've accepted that, and the entire American Eastern Seaboard thanks you for that." She twined her fingers through his, again. "But you're alive. Bucky isn't, and I won't be for much longer."

Steve's eyes widened at that. "What- Has there been any new-"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Just an incredible awareness of my age. I'm not Romanova, Steve. I had never been frozen or experimented on - and I never will be, not now."

> **Though to be fair, Peggy is Betty White’s age and _she_ is still going strong. :P**

Steve swallowed, bringing her hand up to his face, pressing his lips to her knuckles. "Please don't remind me, Peggy, please."

She smiled wetly and him and made no promises.

Instead, she said, "You should ask Tony to take you out on the town, sometime. He's as much of a party boy as his father was."

> **I really hated the way Peggy was portrayed as such a good friend of Howard’s, yet seems to have no connection to Tony. So fuck it, Peggy was Tony’s godmother. Her influence is why Tony is only a little bit of a hot mess of a person, instead of the train wreck of a human being that he is in the comics. :P**

"I've noticed," Steve said, obliging her change of topic and lowering their hands a little. "He's offered, believe me."

Here, she gave him a sly smile. "And in this day and age - you could go to a queer club, too." Here, she gently tugged her hand away from his grip to pat at his shoulder. "You would have no trouble finding someone to pass the night with there, Steve. Believe me."

> **She’s not wrong. Not at all.**

Steve laughed, and felt like he was choking on it.

Peggy moved on to pestering Steve about what was going on in Latveria, quizzing him on 'what Nick and Alex aren't telling me now'. Director Fury and Secretary Pierce still came to her for advice, which amused Steve to no end. Despite that, her suggestion stuck on Steve.

> **Specifically, what her top protégés Nick Fury and Alexander Pierce aren’t telling her. >:)**

So he tried.

He waited until he was back in New York to let Bruce and his interns run some MRIs on him. The night after they were done, Steve researched a little and went out towards one of the more packed gay clubs of New York. Crowded enough that Steve could disappear into a sea of faces, but not filled with so many people that he was likely to be recognized.

It was a club that catered to both gay men and lesbians, so it wasn't all men, not like the gay clubs from back in Steve's day. The queers back then had been a lot more reclusive - obviously, since it was completely illegal back then. Still, while there was no shortage of leather dykes and fairies, most of the people here were...normal, actually. Perfectly normal looking, which wasn't as common in Steve's day as it was here and and now, but hey, that just meant he blended in even more.

> **“Dressing the part” was a much bigger part of queer culture back in the early 20th century – for most of the 20th century, honestly – than it is today in the 21st century.**

Steve took one look at the dance floor and parked himself by the bar, ordering the strongest drink they had and checking out the scene, without trying to be too creepy. God, he felt so old being here, and yet so young. He looked the same age as most of the people here, was younger than many of them...but it was just so different from the kinds of bars he grew up in. And this as an honest to god bar, not even one of the dance clubs he'd seen videos of while researching. Jesus, if he'd gone to one of those, he'd have been back out the door in five minutes.

> **i.e. The Jungle. ;)**

Peggy was right about one thing. In no time, he had men eyeing him up and nudging at each other, probably goading each other into coming over and talking to the shy guy in the corner.

Steve retreated to the pool tables. There, he could keep his head down to keep an eye on the game. He felt a lot better doing something instead of just sitting in a corner and trying to work up the balls to say 'hi' to someone.

> **This was a little bit of a pun (all those balls on pool tables :P). Steve never stopped being super awkward even after he became Captain America, but at least he ~~was taught~~ learned how to make his awkwardness charming.**

Unsurprisingly, someone did eventually recognize him, and Steve tried Natasha's weird reverse-psychology trick.

Surprisingly, it worked. Steve just made a joke about impersonating, a crack about getting free stuff when people thought he was Captain America, and boom, the half dozen people surrounding the current game all thought he was just a normal guy with an uncanny resemblance to a superhero.

If only self-delusion weren't the theme of the night.

> **Steve often _wishes_ he weren’t Captain America, weren’t a world-famous supersoldier and the world’s first real superhero.**

Because one of the guys was a little more interested than the rest. Granted, all of them were - even some of the women were, which Steve tried not to think about too much, not tonight. But Steve found himself gravitated to one of them.

The man lost the pool game to Steve with a smile on his face that made Steve wonder if he'd thrown the game. They let someone else take the pool table as the man took his hand and pulled him to a quieter, dimmer corner, ostensibly to chat and get to know each other more.

> **I originally had all sorts of elaborate Easter egg ideas for this, but ultimately I left him unnamed to keep the focus on Steve’s feelings about nearly hooking up with a guy who reminded him of Bucky.**

It was no surprise to Steve when it turned out the guy meant it biblically, two minutes of chatter as their mouths got closer and closer leading into Steve's first kiss since 1945. The guy was passionate, but gentle, with dark hair and built chest to complement his gentlemanly nature and un-gentlemanly kiss. It was everything Steve imagined Bucky would be like-

Everything he imagined a dead man would be like.

With a sigh, Steve pushed away.

> **Steve is a remarkably self-aware person in this scene.**

"Everything okay, babe?" the guy asked. God, Steve didn't even know his name. To be fair, the guy didn't know Steve's and hadn't asked, but still.

"Yeah, just...this is..." How honest could he be, really? "My first time coming out ever since..."

The man nodded in understanding. "Bad break-up?"

Steve shook his head. He tried to come up with a tactful way of saying it, and ended up blurting out, "He died."

The man went wide-eyed. "Aw, shit." Before Steve could even blink, the man had pulled Steve in for a hug. Despite their moment of tonsil hockey, earlier, this somehow felt more intimate. "I'm so sorry, darling."

> **Because physical intimacy is easy. Emotional intimacy is a lot harder.**

"...thank you," Steve said, for lack of a better answer. He leaned into the embrace, drawing genuine comfort from the man's genuine sympathy.

The man pulled away. "Well, look - you've done great for your first night out since then. But don't push yourself, okay?"

Steve mustered up a smile. "Thank you," he repeated.

The man gripped Steve's hand in his own, much like Peggy had done earlier in the week. "Need someone to stay with you for a bit?"

> **I don’t know who he is but he’s a cinnamon roll too pure for this world.**

Steve shook his head, and released his hand from the man's grip. "No, but thank you. You go have fun, someone who can spend the whole night with you."

After checking one more time, the man pressed a kiss to Steve's temple and sauntered off.

He should've asked the man for his name.

But Steve didn't bother worrying about it, or trying to chase the man down.

Instead, he went back home. Or, well, Tony's tower, at least.

> **It’s not quite “home”, but it’s not like a hotel or a stranger’s place, either. It’s a friend’s home, but also a little more intimate and welcoming than that. He might’ve considered it akin to being his home in the way the Barnes’ apartment was his home when they finally talked him into moving in with them, if he didn’t already feel that way about the Stilinskis’ place.**

Technically, it was still Stark Tower, but Tony never really bothered replacing the rest of his name, leaving only the theatrical A up there. Overnight, after the Battle of New York, it had become a symbol of the Avengers and of resilience. It was how New Yorkers proclaimed that even an alien invasion couldn't stop them now, and it was how the rest of the world defined themselves against a whole new universe out there that this world was only just now becoming a part of.

> **I like the idea of the “Avenging A” being a memetic accident rather than an intentional branding device. :)**

Steve stopped in the street to just stare up at the symbol for a moment. The letter once had only been a small part of Tony's ego, and has since become about something so much bigger than one man could ever hope to be.

This was once supposed to be a monument to Tony's ingenuity, one which literally had his name on it. But now, he never corrected anyone who called it 'Avengers' Tower'.

> **I didn’t want to erase Tony’s often egotistical personality, but I did want to subtly remind readers of his heart and his love for his friends.**

With a soft sigh, Steve finished his way back inside, to the private elevators, and up all the way to the residential floors.

"Welcome back, Captain," JARVIS greeted him as he reached the guest apartment. "How was your night out?"

Steve paused, a hand on the wall as he toed off his shoes.

"...informative," he said finally.

"Sometimes," the digital butler said. "That is the best we can ask for."

Steve smiled sadly down at his plaid socks, and nodded, knowing that even in the dim light, JARVIS would see it.

> **Everything JARVIS knows, Vision will one day know.**

"Truer words had rarely been spoken," he said. And then, "And you won't tell anyone about this, right?"

"Your privacy will be of utmost priority to me," JARVIS said. It amazed Steve that a computer could be capable of not just indignance, but mock-indignance. "As long as it causes no harm to Sir or his immediate associates, or the rest of the Avengers, I will never divulge any information you wish for me to keep private.

> **Tony makes sure everyone around him has a personality, even a digital ‘one’.**

Swallowing, Steve looked up towards the corner where JARVIS' cameras and sensors were.

"Thank you," he said, and went to bed.

It may not have changed his life, his perspective, or his being. But tonight at least taught him one thing:

He was still just as hopeless with guys as he was with girls.

And he was surprisingly okay with that.

> **Steve isn’t “recovered”, but he’s getting there. He’s no longer denying his queerness in the 21st century, but he’s still got a long way to go to being open with it. And despite all the change he’s experienced and he’s undergone, he’s still a little bit himself – after all, he’s always been awkward with the boys and the girls. :) __**


	24. 4.8 - Bruce Banner and the Baby Banshee

_You know Bruce Banner, right?_

> **I cut to this (and cut out any initial mention of the Winter Formal and its events) to really emphasize how disconnected Steve is from the goings-on of Beacon Hills, and remind the reader how all the supernatural shenanigans “look” to the outside world. That huge first season finale that changed the Teen Wolf characters' lives so much, almost no one else really knows about.**

Steve stared at the text in bewilderment, actually pausing mid-step in the hallway between SHIELD combat training rooms. He talked about his friends to Stiles all the time, and made no attempt to hide who they were. Stiles knew who his friends were – so why was he actually asking?

> **Stiles is not subtle. Like, _at all_. :P**

_Yes,_ he texted back. _Why?_

_Can I ask you a favor?_

Steve couldn't help the shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with SHIELD skimping on heating and everything to do with how much Stiles hated asking for things.

> **The 'SHIELD skimping on heating' line was a tiny detail meant to slightly hint at SHIELD as an official institution, not the comical 'superhero agency' that you see in, well, the comics, and how it's often written in fanfic by people who've never had to work in an professional or institutional environment, before.**

Steve poked through several conference rooms, offices, and breakrooms, until finally he gave up and went into one of the remote bathrooms that no one used because it was so far out of everyone's way. After checking that no one was in there right now, he dialed.

> **I also made a point of Steve having to look for an isolated place because, well, SHIELD is an institution, so it's probably not going to be easy for even Steve to find a quiet spot.**

"Steve?" Stiles answered.

"Is everything okay?" Steve asked immediately.

"...not exactly," Stiles said. That alone made Steve grip the sink counter hard as he remembered Stiles' futile attempts to convince Steve that his panic attacks were _okay_.

> **Steve is simultaneously so very right and so very wrong.**

"What's going on?" Steve asked. "And what does it have to do with Bruce?"

"There was-" Stiles paused, took a deep breath, and said, "Lydia was attacked at our Winter Formal. She's recovering, now, but...it's going to be hard on her. And she's kind of a Bruce Banner fan, so I guess I just..." Steve could hear Stiles swallowing nervously from three thousand miles away. "Maybe you could get an autograph or something? Not for me, but just to cheer her up."

> **Stiles is the kind of person who isn't above abusing any and all connections he has – he just won't necessarily do so for personal gain. So he won't try to use a relationship with the leader of the Avengers for himself, but he will for someone else (such as Scott, then Lydia, then Allison).**

Steve stared into the mirror, his own struggle with relief and worry staring back at him – relief that Stiles wasn't hurt, but worry that someone Stiles cared about was. The girl he was pining over, no less – and genuinely cared about outside of his crush on her. "I'll ask him," Steve said. In all honesty, he doubted Bruce would mind signing something for a hurt kid, but Steve didn't want to make promises on someone else's behalf. "Is she okay?"

"She will be," Stiles said. Then under his breath, he added, "Hopefully."

> **Still slipping in the subtle reminders of what's really going on in Beacon Hills outside of Steve's view. >:)**

Steve sighed, then looked up when someone else came into the bathroom.

"I've gotta go," he said quietly. "But I'm sure she'll be fine, okay? I've seen people recover from some pretty terrible things."

"Doesn't make it suck any less," Stiles pointed out.

Steve huffed in saddened humor. After a few more meaningless reassurances, he ended the call. He stared at the screen of his phone, wondering how best to ask Bruce to sign something for an injured Hulk fan.

> **Steve is very awkward. Luckily, so's Bruce.**

He texted Stiles back, in the end, while walking out and towards his next training session.

_Any particular reason she likes the Hulk?_ Steve asked him. It would be easier to ask Bruce to autograph something if he can give the man a good idea of what to say. Or at least if there was a certain kind of merchandise she liked.

The response was almost immediate. Steve had to smile when Stiles described in detail how his friend wasn't a fan of the Hulk, but of Dr. Banner and his scientific work (and, apparently, his work against a particular scientist).

> **You'd be amazed at how snarky and petty esteemed researchers can get in peer-reviewed work.**

Bruce had a lot of issues about the Hulk – namely the dichotomy of how the world viewed the Hulk against what the Hulk actually was, at least in Bruce's mind. He would love to hear someone – especially a kid – value him for his intellectual side, something all too few people did.

After he got home, he had another phone call with another Stilinski.

"We caught the serial killer," John said. "And it was a woman."

> **As of now, most serial killers caught or identified thus far have been men. While partially a case of gender bias – anything particularly brutal or active getting attributed to men unless noted otherwise – there is also a genuine reason for the Sheriff to assume that a serial killer is a man (and thus need to disabuse someone he's talking to about it from the get go once he knows otherwise).**

Steve swallowed. "Does it have anything to do with whatever the hell happened at the dance last night?"

"Possibly, but we don't know for sure," John said. Steve heard some noise in the background, and recognized the sounds of a bustling police station. John must be calling Steve on his break. "Just – did Stiles ever tell you about Scott's girlfriend?"

"Allison?" Steve asked, trying to remember the name.

> **Just because someone is a huge part of Stiles' life, doesn't mean they're a huge part of Steve's.**

"The serial killer was her aunt," John said. "And she murdered people several years ago, and now came back to kill off all the loose ends. Most likely, if she was using some kind of rabid dog or whatever to kill them, it turned on her, if the clawmarks on her throat are anything to go by."

Steve breathed out slow and long. "Jesus fucking Christ," he muttered.

"Yeah," John said. "And-" There was the sound of another phone ringing, and what sounded like some people arguing.

"Go," Steve said. "We can talk later, and I can talk to Stiles. He already told me about his friend."

> **Completely benign and not at all noteworthy workplace interruption: a convenient way to end a conversation when I can't think of a natural way to end it, myself. :P**

"Keep an ear on him for me?" John asked.

"Roger," Steve said, and with a distracted 'thank you', John ended the call.

The next day, Steve video-called Bruce over lunch while trying some delicious noodle soup from a new Vietanmese place down the street whose name he always tried to avoid saying in public. They spent an enjoyable half-hour catching up, not having talked much in a few weeks. Bruce recounted his latest day baby-sitting Clint's kids at the tower – Tony apparently got into a very heated debate with the eight-year-old about some cartoon – and Steve returned that with the story of how Natasha went "undercover" at a SHIELD combat lesson for new agents. Veteran marines learned a hard lesson about how decieving appearances could be when they all got beaten up by a "little girl".

> **That place Steve was talking about was Pho King, by the way. He doesn't like saying its name out loud because the correct pronunciation of phở is “fuh”, not “foe”. ;)**

"Hey, Bruce?" Steve added at the end of their video chat and remembering Stiles' request. "Any chance I could get you to autograph something?"

"Sure," Bruce said with amicable surprise. "For a Hulk fan?"

> **Unless it was someone Bruce particularly disliked or hated, Bruce wouldn't really _refuse_ someone an autograph – and at this point, he and Steve are close enough that Bruce trusts Steve wouldn't ask for an autograph for someone like that.**

"A Dr. Banner fan," Steve said. "A friend of my nephew's, actually. Something about liking some article of yours that smacked down a sexist who-" Steve checked the text message on his phone. "'Can't tell apart a reticulum from his rectum'."

Bruce burst out laughing, just as Tony's voice cut into the conversation with a gleeful, "I remember that one!"

A moment later, the man himself popped up, hooking his chin over Bruce's shoulder and waving at Steve. "Your nephew's friend has good taste."

> **Tony tends to butt into conversations whether I want him to or not. :P**

"Well, she was attacked at their school dance," Steve said, smiling as Bruce drank some tea and Tony cringed at the smell of it. "She's recovering now, and Stiles wants to give her something to cheer her up."

"Beacon Hills, right?" Tony asked, cocking his head with a look of speculation on his face.

"Yeah," Steve confirmed.

Tony pulled away from Bruce, but Steve could still see half his body in the shot of Bruce's camera as he appeared to start poking away at a tablet.

> **It's a mish-mash of comic book canon, post-Avengers 1 movie fanon, and Tony's canonical tendency to over-plan, but I tried to give a more laidback background to it. A lot of his unexpected foresight just comes from looking into something as soon as he hears about them.**

"I wouldn't normally ask for something like this, Bruce," Steve said. "But he wouldn't, either, so-"

"No problem," Bruce cut in, smiling reassuringly. He took a sip of his tea. "We've got some spare merchandise somewhere around here I can sign. Maybe one of those limited edition-"

"Oh, shit."

Tony's quiet, heartbroken invective had Steve's gaze snapping towards the side of the screen Tony was on. Bruce looked over to Tony's tablet, only for his tea-mug to freeze halfway to his mouth in a white-knuckled grip.

> **This was a slightly experimental section for me. Basically, I wanted to convey the horror not (just) through Steve's own reaction, but also through the others' reactions. Personally, as much as I love Teen Wolf, I feel like that's something the show's lost over time (though maybe they're doing better now, I wouldn't know, I'm super far behind on 6B). The first few seasons really conveyed horror very well because they spent just as much time on the characters' reactions to dead bodies and such as the actual horrifying elements themselves, but that's been fading away over the latter half of the show. I'm trying to bring it back and maintain it in this series.**

"Oh my god," he breathed out in horror.

"What?" Steve demanded.

"I was looking up the attack," Tony said. "And-"

Tony brought up his tablet to Bruce's camera, and Steve's gut fell right through the floor at the picture on the screen.

> **But of course, the POV character's own feelings and reaction are still important, too.**

Lydia Martin was probably a beautiful young lady – but covered in so much blood, it was impossible to tell. She was strapped into a gurney being lifted into an ambulance. The low quality of the picture did nothing to hide the tears in her dress, the blood all over her body, and the paleness of her skin.

She looked a fraying thread away from death.

> **Oh, if only you knew, Steve.**

Behind her was a boy, his tuxedo also covered in blood. His handsome features were lost to the terror on his face as two police officers held him back from running to her side.

> **Jackson is a very complicated character, and it's really a shame that not only did the show have to cut his arc so short, but that the fandom didn't pick up on him, either.**

_Cell-phone photo taken by a fellow student and shared online,_ the caption read. _Of Lydia Martin being loaded into the ambulance. Also pictured is classmate Jackson Whittemore, who found her and called 911._

Both names were achingly familiar to him.

"That's Jackson?!" Steve blurted out.

The tablet disappeared from view as Tony pulled it away, leaning his head back towards Bruce's shoulders. The two ashen men looked at Steve in askance.

"The girl is the one Stiles has a crush on," Steve said, leaning forward over the table as latent shock coursed through his veins. "And the boy, Jackson – he's the fella the boys never get along with." Steve shook his head as the enormity of Stiles' understatements started to hit him. "Holy shit."

> **Yet another instance of the dichotomy of what Steve hears about Beacon Hills and its residents, versus what's actually happening. In many ways, that was the primary point of this scene. After a few scenes of the two sides of the Winter Wolves universe kinda stewing on their own and chugging along, this was the beginning of the two sides – the superheroic and the supernatural – slowly starting to come together.**

"I don't think 'holy' is right word, here," Tony said, frowning at the tablet. Bruce set down his tea, looking deep in the mug as he tried to avoid looking at Tony's screen. "They weren't the only ones with a rough night."

"I know," Steve said, rubbing at his head. He looked to Tony. "Remember when I mentioned a fan of yours does archery? Allison Argent?"

Tony pursed his lips, and gestured towards his screen. "Would I be safe in assuming she's related to Kate Argent?"

"Kate Argent is her aunt," Steve said.

"Who's Kate Argent?" Bruce asked, despite looking like he didn't want to know the answer.

"The serial killer my nephew's father has been trying to hunt down for months," Steve said.

> **This word-choice – “my nephew's father” – was intentional. Steve and the Sheriff are friends, but Steve still considers Stiles as family slightly moreso than the Sheriff. His primary relation is Stiles, and everything else is _through_ Stiles. He's still working on developing his own relationships, so to speak.**

Tony elaborated, "She's been found responsible for a recent string of murders, most likely committed to..." He swallowed, like he couldn't believe what he was reading – which was saying a lot, given their line of work. "To cover up the fact she murdered almost an entire family and their close friends, several years ago, by burning down their house."

> **This was done just to highlight that it was never specified whether the Hale pack were a single family, or just acting like one. After all, the packs basically consider themselves a family even if they aren't legally or genetically related.**

Bruce shut his eyes. "Does...does it say why she...?"

"Doesn't look like there's a reason," Tony said. "Just pure psychopathy."

"Pure evil," Bruce growled. Tony's head snapped up, looking as alarmed as Steve felt. But when Bruce opened his eyes, they were brown, not green. He was the kind of upset that made your heart skip beats, not double them.

It was strange, sometimes, having a friend whose eye color could change on the spot.

> **;)**

"Yeah," Tony said, reaching out to wrap an arm around Bruce's shoulders, anchoring him and keeping the monster inside at bay. While Steve could empathize with what might very well be the Hulk's desire to destroy a rare embodiment of evil in the world, the target of his anger was already dead and he was three-thousand miles away from what was left of her.

Bruce took several deep, Hulk-controlling breaths, and looked at Steve.

"If it makes the girl feel better, I'll autograph every piece of Hulk merchandise we have," Bruce said.

"Forget the Hulk merch," Tony said. "I have a better idea."

> **Tony is actually quite similar to Lydia in being a genius at the apex of the petty social pyramid. So he can sympathize with her a little bit in ways that wouldn't occur to most people – such as a gift that is very class, but also intellectually challenging or engaging for her.**

Steve and Bruce both looked at him in surprise.

"Let's print out that article," Tony said. "Get it bound up nice and pretty and everything."

Bruce smiled at the thought. "I remember a lot of the stuff we ultimately left out of it. I can make some marginal commentary-"

"Like a director's cut!" Tony said.

Steve's shoulders fell in relief, trying to get the bloody pictures out of his head. At this point, it wasn't about Stiles, anymore, but for the girl's own sake.

> **While Steve primarily cares about Stiles, that doesn't mean he doesn't care or have sympathy for Stiles' friends, and is incapable of caring about others in their own right.**

"Thanks, fellas," Steve said, smiling gratefully at them.

They responded with smiles full of determination.

The shared investment in the gift was probably what made Steve's heart freeze over in genuine fear when he got a message from Stiles saying Lydia was missing. It didn't help that the message came less than an hour after Tony texted him a picture of the article. He'd ordered one of those fancy leather portfolios for it.

> **In retrospect, the wording wasn't the clearest in this paragraph – even with context, “the article” is a little vague and it takes the next sentence to clear up what it's about.**

Steve's gut grew heavier with every day she wasn't found. But just as he was considering taking some leave to go over there and help look for her, she was found, safe and sound. Well, 'sound' might be a bit strong a word for wandering around naked in the woods for three days straight. But she wasn't hurt anymore than what put her in the hospital in the first place.

Small mercies.

The gift, thankfully, turned out to be a success.

> **And thus a more concrete connection between a Frost Bite scene/event and a Talking Cure one.**

It was hard to miss. Stiles texted him a picture of Lydia Martin, looking healthy and like she was never attacked, as she stood in front of a locker at school, paging through the article. She was grinning down at whatever she was reading, all but glowing in the picture.

Thank you.

> **That was supposed to be italicized. Whoops.**

That simple text message somehow said so much more than any amount of creative punctuation or strings of emoticons ever could.

Steve made sure to forward the picture to Bruce during their next video-call. He watched Bruce open the picture on the little video screen.

The Hulk left so much destruction in his wake that Bruce rarely saw anything positive about himself, any worth in his life. Even little Hulk fans left him reeling, feeling like they loved a lie, a fairy-tale version of the Hulk that belied what the green rage monster was actually capable of.

> **Getting in the fluff even with all the hints of angst underneath.**

Bringing some joy into someone's life, free of the baggage of the Hulk...

Steve wondered if Bruce got more than he gave, and said as much to Stiles.

_We could all use some more smiles,_ Stiles texted back wisely. Steve glanced at look of disbelief on Bruce's face, how hard it was for him to understand that his words alone could make a kid happy.

He could do nothing but agree.

> **Heh, this was kind of amusing, now that I've written the corresponding scene in Talking Cure. What Steve interpreted as wisdom on Stiles' part, was something Stiles texted back in distraction and was pretty hollow of meaning to him.**

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I love to hear people's thoughts. Anything that particularly interested you, anything that bored you, anything you wish there was more of or less of, etc. I'm a history nerd (I got a degree in it by accident), so I love to talk about this stuff! Whether it's thoughts on the story itself, my commentary, or just thoughts about these two universes coming together, I would love to hear it. :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Author Commentary for Roots and Anchors](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7523311) by [kawherp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawherp/pseuds/kawherp)




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